Nineteenth Century America in the Society of States (Routledge Studies in US Foreign Policy) [1 ed.] 1032370238, 9781032370231

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NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA IN THE SOCIETY OF STATES

This book examines how the United States adopted and contributed to the practices of international society—the habits and practices states use to regulate their relations—during the nineteenth century. Expert contributors consider America’s “entry” into international society and how independence forced it to enter into diplomatic relations with European states and start a permanent engagement with a society of states. Individual chapters focus on U.S. perceptions of the international order and its place within it, the U.S. position on international issues of that period, and how America’s perceptions and positions affected or were affected by the habits, practices, and institutions of international society. This volume will serve as an invaluable text for undergraduate courses focusing on international relations theory and U.S. foreign policy. It will also appeal to established scholars in international relations, diplomacy, and international history and historical sociology. Cornelia Navari, formerly Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham, UK, is Visiting Professor at the University of Buckingham, UK. She has edited International Society: The English School for the EISA Pivot Series (2021), International Organization in the Anarchical Society (2019), and Power Transition in the Anarchical Society (2022) with Tonny Brems Knudson. She edited Progressivism and American Foreign Policy between the World Wars with Molly Cochran (2017). Her latest monograph is The International Society Tradition (2021). Yannis A. Stivachtis is Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech. His publications include The Enlargement of International Society (1998), World Society in English School Theory (2018, editor), Interrogating Regional International Societies, Questioning the Global International Society (2015, editor), EUrope and the World (2012, editor), Regional International Society in a Post-Enlargement Europe (2011, co-editor), International Order in a Globalizing World (2007, editor), and Understanding European Union’s Mediterranean Enlargement: The English School and the Expansion of Regional International Societies (2002, co-editor).

Routledge Studies in US Foreign Policy Series Editors: Inderjeet Parmar, City University, and John Dumbrell, Durham University

This new series sets out to publish high-quality works by leading and emerging scholars critically engaging with United States Foreign Policy. The series welcomes a variety of approaches to the subject and draws on scholarship from international relations, security studies, international political economy, foreign policy analysis and contemporary international history. Subjects covered include the role of administrations and institutions, the media, think tanks, ideologues and intellectuals, elites, transnational corporations, public opinion, and pressure groups in shaping foreign policy, US relations with individual nations, with global regions and global institutions and America’s evolving strategic and military policies. The series aims to provide a range of books – from individual research monographs and edited collections to textbooks and supplemental reading for scholars, researchers, policy analysts and students. The United States’ Residual Hegemony: A Complex-Gramscian Examination A Complex-Gramscian Examination Rashad Seedeen Creating the Post-Soviet Russian Market Economy Through American Eyes Daniel M. Satinsky Nineteenth Century America in the Society of States Reluctant Power Edited by: Cornelia Navari and Yannis A. Stivachtis

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www​.routledge​.com ​/ Routledge​ -Studies​-in​- US ​-Foreign​- Policy​/ book​-series​/ RSUSFP

NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA IN THE SOCIETY OF STATES Reluctant Power

Edited by Cornelia Navari and Yannis A. Stivachtis

Designed cover image: Bettman via Getty Images First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Cornelia Navari and Yannis A. Stivachtis, individual chapters, the contributors The right of Cornelia Navari and Yannis A. Stivachtis to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-37015-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-37023-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-33492-7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003334927 Typeset in Sabon by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

CONTENTS

List of Contributors 1 The United States in the Nineteenth-Century International Society: An Introduction Yannis Stivachtis 2 Nineteenth-Century America’s Role in Global History: A Brief Cornelia Navari 3 The American Founding and the Society of States David C. Hendrickson

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4 America and the Other Revolutions: Neutrality and Nonengagement in Latin America and Greece Yannis A. Stivachtis

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5 The United States, the Monroe Doctrine, and International Society Paul Sharp

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6 Slaves, Indians, and European Legal Formalism in Nineteenth-Century America Christopher R. Rossi

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7 The United States inside “British International Society,” 1838–1860: Imperial Rivalries and Compatibilities Daniel M. Green 8 The United States and the Liberal Transformation of International Society in the Nineteenth Century: The Institution of Sovereignty Mikulas Fabry 9 Wheaton’s Elements and the Expansion of International Society Cornelia Navari 10 A merica and Arbitration as an Institution of International Society in the Nineteenth Century: American and British Treaties from 1783 to 1871 Mary Durfee 11 The United States as a Great Power: The Nineteenth-Century Acceptance of Rank David Clinton 12 Constituting the Long Nineteenth Century: The United States and the Primary Institutions of International Society Barry Buzan and Richard Little

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Index 241

CONTRIBUTORS

Barry Buzan is Professor Emeritus at the London School of Economics and

Political Science, UK. His books relevant to the English School include From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation (2004), Contesting International Society in East Asia (2014, co-edited with Yongjin Zhang), An Introduction to the English School of International Relations: The Societal Approach (2014), The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations (2015, with George Lawson), and Global International Society: A New Framework for Analysis (2018, with Laust Schouenborg). David Clinton is Professor of Political Science at Baylor University, having

previously taught at Tulane University and several liberal arts colleges in the United States. His areas of scholarly interest are American foreign policy and the history of international relations thought. Among his publications are The Two Faces of National Interest and Tocqueville, Lieber, and Bagehot: Liberalism Confronts the World, the edited volume The Realist Tradition and Contemporary International Relations, and the co-edited volume Realism and the Liberal Tradition: The International Relations Theory of Whittle Johnston. Mary Durfee is Professor Emerita at Michigan Technological University, USA.

She has published on international relations theory, the North American Great Lakes, and the Arctic. She took her Ph.D. at Cornell and has been an Annenberg Scholar and twice a Fulbright (Malta and Hungary). Her current book project, Parsing Borders with Ink, looks at Canada–US relations through their treaties. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, with her husband. 

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Mikulas Fabry is Associate Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International

Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA. His research focuses on international norms that regulate claims of, and conflicts over, legitimate statehood, government, and territorial borders. He is the author of Recognizing States: International Society and the Establishment of New States since 1776 (Oxford University Press, 2010) and, with James KerLindsay, Secession and State Creation: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2023). Daniel M. Green is Associate Professor of International Relations at the

University of Delaware, specializing in international relations theory and history. He has published in many journals and collections and recently edited Guide to the English School in International Studies (with Cornelia Navari, Wiley Blackwell 2014) and The Two Worlds of Nineteenth Century International Relations: The Bifurcated Century (Routledge 2018). His current book project examines the international spread of liberalism and republicanism in the first half of the nineteenth century. David C. Hendrickson is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Colorado

College, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA, and president of the John Quincy Adams Society. He is the author of nine books, including Freedom, Independence, Peace: John Quincy Adams and American Foreign Policy (2022), Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding (2003), and Union, Nation, or Empire: The American Debate over International Relations, 1789–1941 (2009). His website is davidhendrickson​.or​g. Richard Little is Professor Emeritus at the University of Bristol, UK, where

he was previously a Professor of Politics until 2009. He was elected fellow of the British Academy in the same year. Earlier in his career, he was editor of the Review of International Studies and Chair of the British International Studies Association. He wrote with Barry Buzan International Systems in World History (2000). His last major publication was The Balance of Power: Metaphors, Myths and Models (2007). Cornelia Navari, formerly Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham,

UK, is Visiting Professor at the University of Buckingham, UK. She has edited International Society: The English School for the EISA Pivot Series (2021), International Organization in the Anarchical Society (2019), and Power Transition in the Anarchical Society (2022) with Tonny Brems Knudson. She edited Progressivism and American Foreign Policy between the World Wars with Molly Cochran (2017). Her latest monograph is The International Society Tradition (2021).

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Christopher R. Rossi teaches International Law and International Relations at

the Arctic University of Norway. He is the author of Remoteness Reconsidered: The Atacama Desert and International Law (University of Michigan Press, 2021), Whiggish International Law: Elihu Root, the Monroe Doctrine, and International Law in the Americas (Brill/Nijhoff, 2019), Sovereignty and Territorial Temptation (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Broken Chain of Being, James Brown Scott and the Origins of Modern International Law (Kluwer, 1993), and Equity and International Law (Transnational, 1991). Paul Sharp is Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota

Duluth in the United States. He is interested in diplomacy, diplomatic theory, and the English School and edited The Sage Handbook of Diplomacy with C. Constantinou and P. Kerr (2016). In addition to his research in these areas, he has written on aspects of Irish, British, and American foreign policy. He is currently working on a study of the relationship between classical Chinese thought and contemporary Chinese diplomacy. Yannis A. Stivachtis is Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech, USA. His

publications include The Enlargement of International Society (1998), World Society in English School Theory (2018, editor), Interrogating Regional International Societies, Questioning the Global International Society (2015, editor), EUrope and the World (2012, editor), Regional International Society in a Post-Enlargement Europe (2011, co-editor), International Order in a Globalizing World (2007, editor), and Understanding European Union’s Mediterranean Enlargement: The English School and the Expansion of Regional International Societies (2002, co-editor).

1 THE UNITED STATES IN THE NINETEENTHCENTURY INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY An Introduction Yannis Stivachtis

The purpose of this volume is to examine to what extent the United States adopted the practices of international society during the nineteenth century and how U.S. practices have contributed to the evolution of the primary institutions of international society during that same period. The relevance of the subject and the origins of this volume trace back to discussions among the members of the English School (ES) of International Relations regarding the slow progress of ES theory to penetrate the American university community, in contrast to and despite the overall appeal of its work, not only in Europe but increasingly worldwide. Both reached a point of crystallization at the final ES panel at the 60th Annual International Studies Association (ISA) Convention in Toronto in 2019, which, besides noting the general reluctance of American IR scholars to adopt either post-positive or inductive theorizing, drew attention to a wide skepticism among ordinary Americans as well as scholars, concerning the existence of anything that might be termed a society of states. This led to the observation that ES scholars, for their part, had also paid little attention to and indeed had generally neglected the United States and its progress in international society. During the panel discussion, Barry Buzan—following his conversation with Richard Little—suggested that American scholars might take more notice of the ES if ES scholars would spend more time treating the United States in terms of “international society.” The purpose of this volume is to do exactly that. To this end, individual chapters will focus on the American perceptions of international order, in the first instance during the nineteenth century. It will reflect upon America’s place within the nineteenth-century international order, how that order impinged American society, and how it affected its view of itself and its DOI: 10.4324/9781003334927-1

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diplomacy. It will also detail how the American experience, in turn, affected the development of key elements of the international order. It will begin the process by reviewing the central tenets of ES theory concerning the structure of international society, and particularly, what is meant by “primary institutions.” The Theoretical Construction of International Society

Classical ES work was based on two main historical projects. The first project, associated with the work of Martin Wight (1977) and Adam Watson (1992), sought to compare how different international societies have evolved in different times and places. This work depicts international relations as a social order or structure and the specific nature and dynamics of this social order as the key objects of study (Buzan 2014:7). The second project, which is associated with the work of Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (1984), focuses on the expansion of the European society of states and its gradual transformation into the contemporary global order. As part of this project, various scholars have attempted to examine how non-European political entities have gained entry into the expanding European international society (Bull & Watson 1984: chapters 8–13; Gong 1984; Zhang 1991; Suzuki 2009). The two projects overlap in considering the early phase of the rise of the West (1500–1800) and merge into one when the West becomes globally dominant during the nineteenth century. One of the most salient points raised by Buzan (2004) is the important link between the English School’s historical projects and the development of its thinking about the institutions of international society as a way of understanding international social structure. For example, both the comparative and the expansion/evolution historical approaches make extensive reference to such institutions as diplomacy, balance of power, war, international law, great power management, and the market. These are, in Buzan’s terms, “durable and recognised patterns of shared practices rooted in values held commonly by the members of interstate societies, and embodying a mix of norms, rules and principles.” Buzan pointed out that such institutions provide a way of describing and differentiating international societies and tracking their evolution. He referred to them as “primary” in keeping with John Searle’s notion that social constructions have a hierarchical nature and that some social constructions provide the bases of other constructions. Primary institutions offer a way of seeing international society as a form of social structure. In other words, any given international society can be defined in terms of the set of primary institutions that compose it. Moreover, the rise, evolution, and sometimes obsolescence of primary institutions can be used to frame a historical account of how international societies evolve. As Buzan’s work on regional international societies shows, this approach

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can also usefully be applied to differentiate regional international societies both from each other and from the global level. Moreover, drawing on the pluralist–solidarist spectrum, a typology of international societies based on the thickness and type of their primary institutions can be established. Buzan argues that such a social structural approach dissolves the necessity for a concept of an international system by folding all into types of international societies. The Primary Institutions of International Society

A core focus of the ES has accordingly been the identification and study of the elementary institutions of international society (Schouenborg 2014; Knudsen & Navari 2019). Martin Wight (1991:140–141) began the process by defining institutions as “recognized and established usages governing the relations between individuals and groups” and “enduring, complex, integrated, organized behavior patterns through which social control is exerted and by means of which the fundamental social desires or needs are met.” Wight (1977:29–33 and 47–49) early identified dynasticism, trade, diplomacy, alliances, guarantee, war, neutrality, arbitration, the balance of power, international law, and sovereignty as institutions distinctive to the historical European international society and that defined it. Wight’s “list” was a somewhat haphazard collection of observable social practices that states engaged in. Hedley Bull, who according to Tim Dunne (1995:141), is credited with “putting institutions on the map,” reduced the list to five institutions that he regarded as central to the maintenance of international order—the balance of power, great power management, diplomacy, international law, and war (Wilson 2012:568–569). Defining institutions as “sets of habits and practices shaped towards the realization of common goals.” Bull (1977:74) called his set of five the “collaborative institutions,” and he assigned to them the central role for the maintenance of international society as a political/social order. He named many other institutions as well, but these five were the ones that maintained the order. Implicit in Bull’s analysis, as well, was the treatment of the state as the “bedrock,” “master” institution of international society since he argued that an international society was, by definition, a society of states. Other ES scholars have drawn slightly different schemas for primary institutions and have developed different classifications of them. For example, Alan James (1999:468) identified sovereignty as the “master” institution of international society and viewed it as “the constitutive principle of interstate relations.” Worth noting is that James (1978:93) also highlights the “functional understanding” of institutions by speaking of sovereignty in terms of rules about who can be a member of international society. Although he placed primacy on sovereignty, he also accounted for the way diplomacy,

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political boundaries, and international law indicate the presence of an international society. Similarly, Robert Jackson (2000:102–112) emphasizes sovereignty as a key institution of international society. While Jackson does not attempt a direct discussion about institutions, he does consider the way in which diplomacy, colonialism, international law, and war may be “compatible with an institutional view” (Buzan 2004:171). James Mayall (2000:149–150) began a process of distinguishing among institutions, initially as between “institutions and principles.” He suggested that international law, diplomacy, and the balance of power constituted institutions in the sense of bodies of rules, while sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-intervention, self-determination, non-discrimination, and human rights were principles of action. But the benchmark theorist was Kalevi Holsti whose contribution is his “concern to develop primary institutions as benchmarks for monitoring significant changes in international society” (Buzan 2004:120). Holsti first identified institutions empirically in terms of three elements: first, patterned practices; second, coherent sets of ideas and/or beliefs undergirding them, and third, norms, rules, and etiquette which prescribe and proscribe certain kinds of behavior (Holsti 2004:21–22). He then proceeded to distinguish between foundational institutions, which “define and give privileged status to certain actors,” “define the fundamental principles, rules, and norms upon which their mutual relations are based,” and “lead to highly patterned forms of action” and procedural institutions, which “are composed of those repetitive practices, ideas, and norms that underlie and regulate the interactions and transactions between the separate actors” (Holsti 2004:25). Like Mayall and James, Holsti too considers sovereignty as a key institution of international society. The importance of Holsti’s works lies in his thinking of primary institutions in either “foundational” or “procedural” terms (Holsti 2004:25). According to Holsti (2004:25), “foundational institutions define and give privileged status to certain actors. They also define the fundamental principles, rules, and norms upon which their mutual relations are based.” Alternatively, procedural institutions are “repetitive practices, ideas, and norms that underlie and regulate interactions and transactions between the separate actors” (Holsti 2004:25). For Holsti, both foundational and procedural terms constitute primary institutions. For example, he suggests that sovereignty, territoriality, and international law constitute foundational institutions, while diplomacy, war, trade, and colonialism constitute procedural institutions (Holsti 2004:26–28). What is useful about Holsti’s approach is that it considers the way institutions evolve over time. In this way, it recognizes the emergence of new institutions like human equality and environmental stewardship, and in the same way, it acknowledges the decline of other institutions like colonialism and imperialism.

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Dissatisfied with the lack of definitional and theoretical precision, Barry Buzan, in a major effort to reexamine English School concepts, made a further important distinction between primary and secondary institutions. The latter refers to formal bodies and organizations founded for a specific purpose, while the former are seen as “more fundamental practices” (Buzan 2004:165) that “are constitutive of both states and international society, in that they define not only the basic character of states but also their patterns of legitimate behavior in relation to each other, as well as the criteria of membership of international society” (Buzan 2014:17). Buzan’s contribution to the discussion of primary institutions lies in the idea of a “nested hierarchy” as a way to categorize institutions. He argues that some primary institutions “can be understood as containing, or generating others” (Buzan 2004:182). Buzan does this by constructing a list of what he calls “master” institutions. These are primary institutions that can “stand alone.” In this regard, he considers sovereignty, territoriality, diplomacy, great power management, equality of people, the market, nationalism, and environmental stewardship to be “master” institutions. Moreover, Buzan (2004:187) identifies a list of institutions that are “derivatives” of the master institutions. For example, he establishes great power management as the master institution, and the institutions derived from this are alliances, war, and the balance of power. It is important to note that both the “master” and the “derivative” forms are considered primary institutions. As to the relationship between primary and secondary institutions, the primary ones are “the enduring fundamental practices which shape and constrain the formation, evolution, and demise of secondary institutions” (Buzan 2004:120), while the secondary institutions are merely bureaucratic structures that facilitate the operation of primary institutions. He admits that his list of secondary institutions consists of only a fraction of all examples but that it should begin to illustrate how primary and secondary institutions relate to each other. For example, the primary institutions of diplomacy and multilateralism as master and derivative, respectfully, often reflect through secondary institutions such as the UN, NATO, UN Conferences, Embassies, and the like. Similarly, great powers have managerial responsibility for international order. This practice continues in the UN Security Council with the “legalized hegemony” of the Permanent Five members: the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China (Simpson 2004). What Buzan’s taxonomy explores is how secondary institutions may link to primary institutions. While he suggests a more exhaustive list is required to “trace all of the crosslinkages” between primary and secondary institutions, it provides a starting point for further understanding of this relationship. Buzan and Holsti have done much to sharpen our understanding of international institutions. While a lively debate continues, registered in some of the contributions to this volume, the result of their individual and collective

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efforts is that there is a broad consensus among those working within the English School tradition on the current foundational institutions in Holsti’s terms—the ones that “define and give privileged status to certain actors”: namely, sovereignty, the balance of power, international law, diplomacy, war, and great power management, not excluding possible others, and a general willingness to include the market and colonialism (Knudsen & Navari 2019 and Knudsen & Navari 2022). The debate continues over how to define primary institutions in general; which specific institutions fall into this category and how to identify them empirically; whether there is any hierarchy among them; and what is the relationship, or even how to clearly differentiate, between them and secondary institutions (Fabry in this volume). But there is also a consensus, as Mikulas Fabry, below, has pointed out, that all institutions, even the most foundational and durable, are not fixed but are subject to change and evolution; and second, that the operation of secondary institutions can affect the complexion of primary ones and not just the other way around (Knudsen & Navari 2019; Fabry in this volume). America’s Entry into International Society

America first entered international society as an object of it: in 1493, the Pope proclaimed the Treaty of Tordesillas, which established hemispheres of exclusive jurisdiction for Spain in the west and Portugal in the east to avoid conflict between the two imperial states. The discovery of the Americas, in turn, gave rise to doctrinal disputes concerning the status of the overseas political communities (Stivachtis 1998:72–93). According to the prevalent doctrine, a self-evident distinction between Europeans and non-Europeans became supplemented by a further distinction between civilized and uncivilized peoples. It held that European civilization had an absolute right to expand and to impose itself and that it was a particular European mission to carry the banner of civilization into barbarous lands. Conquest and subjection followed the natural superiority of European civilization. International law, so the argument went, was the law governing the relations of civilized states; accordingly, barbarous communities were not, by definition, subject to it, nor could they claim protection in respect of it. This implied that the savage communities had no rights; thus, they could not occupy territories. Their lands were considered unoccupied and therefore available to European colonization and settlement. The savage communities also, arguably, did not have the right to make treaties since they were not subjects of international law. Thus, whatever treaties may have been between Europeans and non-Europeans, were, arguably, not strictly treaties in international law, nor had they validity in the constitutional law of the European powers. If they imposed obligations, they were of a moral, not a legal nature (Wight 1952:8–9).

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To be sure, the natural law thinkers developed a theory of the unity of humankind. The Spanish jurist and theologian Suarez argued during the Age of Exploration that although every “people” is a community, it is nonetheless a member of a universal body, while Gentili spoke of the unwritten law of all nations. Likewise, Vitoria asserted that there was a worldwide legal community and that all peoples of the world form a “societas naturalis.” By such natural law doctrine, the savage communities participated in a universal law and had equal consideration in respect of it, and others had a duty to respect them and their ways of life. But the theory did not prevail against the exploitation of the American communities and the evolution of the European self-definition according to civilizational lines. The result of exploitation was the destruction of the indigenous civilizations and their replacement by colonial states formed according to the European archetype. It is worth mentioning that no single Western hemisphere state was a restoration of a pre-discovery community (Watson 1984b:139). Thus, the process of European expansion marks a sharp discontinuity between the original American societies and the new European dependent states which came into being (Elliott 1972:27). From the beginning, these new states were viewed as an extension of Christian Europe, having a European form and run by Europeans. Soon the example of the Spaniards and Portuguese was followed by the British and the French, who established colonial states in the Caribbean and North America. These later colonies, unlike those of Spain and Portugal, experienced more direct rule by the emigrants than the central rule of the mother state. Nevertheless, all the European colonies were tied to their European homelands by constitutional provisions and in terms of culture as well as economics and trade. Additionally, the European settlers developed autonomous systems of administration similar to those of their homelands to manage their affairs (Stivachtis 1998:79). Consequently, and by means of which, they acquired the necessary experience and social forms required for independent statehood and membership in the international society. Most European states viewed colonies as an extension of their frontiers, while colonies came increasingly to influence the policies of some European great powers. The idea, argued by some in the expansion process, that states might be in conflict in other parts of the world and still remain at peace in Europe became outdated: colonial events no longer took place in a different political world. The Anglo–French and Anglo–Spanish rivalries involving their colonies that developed steadily from the mid-eighteenth century demonstrate it. At the same time, the legitimacy of multiple independencies inspired in an increasing number of European settlers in the Americas a desire to disassociate themselves from dependence on one European state or involvement in the European balance of power and to look after their own interests as independent members of European society. The European settler

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communities sought independence as holders of European culture and civilization. They were also regarded in Europe as members of one family. What made them members of the European family was the process of their articulation, namely that they were all states on the European model, inhabited or dominated by people bearing the European culture. The United States was the first American state to be admitted to the international society as a member and not as an object, following its independence by armed secession from Britain (with the assistance of France, Britain’s main opponent). Like all other American states, the United States was dominated and largely settled by Europeans and had a political order based on principles and traditions that were European. But since membership in the international society presupposes sovereignty and independence, the admission of the United States could not have taken place without an independence movement and without the resort to arms, in which France played an essential role. What thus contributed to the United States’ entry into international society was not, in strictly causal terms, its European culture but its struggle against British rule, enabled by the Anglo–French rivalry. Once the country achieved its independence, however, its European culture facilitated, as we shall see, its participation in international society. American Readings of “International Society”

That there is an international society, or at least an international order, to which America is related has been acknowledged in some American scholarship, albeit in a rather round-about and typically American way. It appears in accounts of American foreign policy, in terms of its “international orientation.” Students of U.S. foreign policy generally agree that the country’s international orientation can be broadly divided between two historical periods (Zoellick 2020; LaFeber 2013; Herring 2008; Perkins 1995). First, a period of non-engagement with an ongoing international order associated with the European empires that began with the country’s independence and continued until the end of the nineteenth century. The second period, characterized by the country’s gradual international engagement with that society, began with the rise of the United States as a great power understood in terms of a European experience. For example, John Mearsheimer (2001:234–235) argues that “the United States achieved great-power status in about 1898” and that “the United States was no ordinary great power by 1900. It had the most powerful economy in the world and it had clearly gained hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.” At the same time, there has been much discussion in American literature as to what the orientation of the long period of non-engagement actually involved. For example, Joyce Kaufman (2021) identifies three concepts associated with non-engagement: isolationism, unilateralism, and

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neutrality. Among these three concepts, “unilateralism” and “neutrality” have, Kaufman suggests, very specific meanings within an international system and are accorded meaning in reference to the system/society. This is most obvious with regard to neutrality. According to Kaufman, when a nation pursues a policy of neutrality, it chooses not to engage in any military, political, or security alliances. In other words, it remains apart from any aspect of the international system that would require it to take sides or get involved militarily. Because of its declared status, a country that is neutral is generally willing to accept specific roles and responsibilities within the international system. Often such a country is used as the site for various international negotiations (i.e., Switzerland/Geneva or Austria/Vienna) so that no one country in the negotiation has the “home team advantage” (Kaufman 2021:20). A declaration of neutrality also means that other countries will (or should) respect that position and not invade or attack a neutral nation (Kaufman 2021:20). Neutrality is a social practice and accordingly anyone claiming that America was a neutral state in the period of isolationism would ipso facto be giving it a particular role in international society at a particular time. Rejecting the idea of “neutrality” as the nineteenth-century U.S. foreign policy orientation, Kaufamn suggests that the U.S. foreign policy during that period was primarily that of unilateralism (Kaufman 2021:20). Although the majority of foreign policy texts refer to the early period of U.S. foreign policy as a period of “isolationism,” meaning that the United States was “isolated” (removed) from the rest of the world, preferring to focus within, Kaufman argues that the United States was involved in a limited way of its own choosing, thereby making “unilateralist” the more appropriate term (Kaufman 2021:20). This is consistent with the point made by diplomatic historians, such as Walter McDougall (1997:40) who describe the period as “unilateralist.” According to McDougall (1997:40), the essence of Unilateralism was to be at Liberty to make foreign policy independent of the “toils of European ambition.” Unilateralism never meant that the United States should, or for that matter could, sequester itself or pursue an ostrich-like policy toward all foreign countries. It simply meant … that the self-evident course for the United States was to avoid permanent entangling alliances and to remain neutral in Europe’s wars. Thus, according to Kaufman and McDougall, the concept of “unilateralism” describes a foreign policy through which the United States was engaged with the world, although steering clear of formal alliances or political obligations. In Chapter 3 of this volume, however, David Hendrickson effectively refutes Kaufman’s and McDougall’s argument by suggesting that “neutrality” is

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the best way of describing the U.S. foreign policy of that period. This argument is also well developed in one of Hendrickson’s earlier works (Tucker & Hendrickson 1990). Among other things, the contributions to this volume would help to shed some light on this debate. To remind ourselves, this “policy of aloofness” or political detachment from international affairs was advocated by Thomas Jefferson, George Washington’s Secretary of State, who saw this as “the best way to preserve and develop the nation as a free people” (cited in Wittkopf et al. 2003:27). This approach was consistent with that advocated by other founders of the country. In his often-quoted farewell address as president, George Washington warned the leaders of the new country to “steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” He asked the country why we should “entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice.”1 John Adams, the second U.S. president, wrote in a letter in 1805 of the principles in foreign affairs that he advocated and followed as president and specifically, that “we should make no treaties of alliance with any European power; that we should consent to none but treaties of commerce; that we should separate ourselves, as far as possible and as long as possible, from all European politics and wars” (cited in Adams 2010). With the declaration of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, America returned the favor. According to the Monroe Doctrine, while there would be no American interference in European politics, the United States would not tolerate any future interference by European powers in the American continent. But unilateralism also had its limits. Europe in the eighteenth century was in a constant struggle for power, with France and England especially struggling for prominence. America’s founders may have hoped to warn future leaders that it would be in the country’s interest to stay clear of them, but it had no wish to break any economic ties and wished indeed to expand them. America’s first resident legation was established at Tangiers in 1796 to allow American traders to participate in the lucrative Mediterranean trade. Indeed, the evidence suggests that “the U.S. economy was at least as dependent on foreign trade in 1790 as it was two hundred years later” (Mead 2002:14), and much of that trade, and, in fact, the entire United States economic system, “was inextricably bound up in the British economic system” (Mead 2002:17). Hence, while the United States in its early years remained removed from the politics and wars of Europe, it was linked directly to Europe economically. Kaufman argues that pursuing a foreign policy of unilateralism allowed the United States to pick and choose when, where, and how to be

1  G eorge Washington’s Farewell Address, September 17, 1796, http://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu​ /18th ​_ century​/washing​.asp.

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involved with other countries and that unilateralism provided the framework for geographic expansion through what would become known as America’s “manifest destiny.” It allowed the country to strengthen economically through trade and, eventually, industrialization, and as U.S. trade and commerce grew, a military (especially a navy) would be needed to protect U.S. interests. In short, unilateralism allowed the United States to become a “great power,” and some would say an imperialist power, by the end of the nineteenth century (Kaufman 2021:21). It is within this international political and economic context that the contributors of this volume will seek to examine how U.S. practices have contributed to the operation of the primary institutions of international society during the nineteenth century. The Main Themes

Cornelia Navari (Chapter 2) investigates America’s role in world history sets the broader political framework within which nineteenth-century America operated. Originally, a minor participant in an emerging and changing global order of imperial rivalries, imperial concerting, and imperial constructions, the small Republic began its history as a settler state of nearly 4 million people (in which half a million were slaves), tied into the British imperial system and a minor nuisance in the British–French rivalry. The imperial order of rivalries sustained its independence, and the ascendancy of Britain within that order, particularly its mastery of the Atlantic, and the rules-based order of that mastery, allowed the New England trade to flourish and, for a few years, at least protected the slave trade on the basis of which the plantations economies of the Southern states flourished. In the years between the making of the Constitution and the onset of the Civil War in 1861, America’s constitutional order was more internationalist than domestic. According to David Hendrickson (Chapter 3), a weak congeries of weak states, the separate American states “related to one another and counterpoised to one another in terms, variously, of doctrines of the balance of power, nonintervention, the equality of states, and defense against aggression”. Given this backdrop, the issue of cooperation among refractory states was of fundamental importance. Hendrickson relates the ideas of “federative system” and “federal union” as understood by the Founding Fathers to ideas commonly thought of as a special preserve of twentieth-century internationalism such as “security community” and “international regime.” When the 13 British colonies in North America fought for their independence from the British Empire, their leaders were well-acquainted with the classic texts of international law, notably Grotius and Pufendorf, and they welcomed the recently translated Vatell. They also had pronounced ideas of the requirements of diplomacy. Hendrickson below quotes John Adam’s

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letter of 1783 to the Congress of the Confederation, on the qualities of the ideal foreign minister: He should be well versed in the principles of ethics, of the law of nature and nations, of legislation and government, of the civil Roman law, of the laws of England and the United States, of the public law of Europe, and in the letters, memoirs, and histories of those great men, who have heretofore shone in the diplomatic order, and conducted the affairs of nations, and the world. The diplomatic norms of Europe were accepted by the Founding Fathers as a guide to their own practice. The new Republic was plunged almost at once into the toils of Great Power conflict and Great Power diplomacy, as Britain sought to restrain revolutionary France on the sea as well as land. Their fight to control the sea lanes subjected Americans to seizures and impressments, as traditional appeals to neutrality came to naught (and French privateers operated along the Caribbean for years after France’s defeat, while America had no navy). The revolutionary mood had moreover seized Latin America and the Ottoman Empire, requiring responses from an untried country, which had to feel its way forward to a diplomacy, and diplomatic principles, that acknowledged and aided the independence movements while keeping trading routes intact and avoiding Great Power reprisals. It was in this context that America’s engagement with neutrality and the neutrality doctrines became fixed (Stivachtis, Chapter 4). Aside from the neutrality doctrines, its first conscious engagement with the norms of international society was the Monroe Doctrine, although it was not identified as such for another quarter century. The doctrine attempted to establish a rule by which, according to President Monroe, the people of the American Continents, “by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain,” are henceforth “not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” Later on in the text of his Seventh Annual Message to the U.S. Congress on December 2, 2023, President Monroe (1823) added that We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those [European] powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. Paul Sharp (Chapter 5) points to the multiple articulations of the doctrine and locates its enduring trace in the etiquette of the sphere of influence. In return, Europe sent to America the doctrines of Legal Formalism. As opposed to natural law, which relied on abstract principles external to the

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legal world (discerned either by right reason or by divine inspiration), formalism derived legal principles from a legal order made up of states as the sole domestic and international lawmakers. Christopher Rossi (Chapter 6) traces its influence on America’s engagement with the international slave trade and with the conversion of independent Indian tribes to subject peoples—a conversion that prepared the way for the post-Civil War frontier expansion. (Rossi reminds us that in respect of the slave trade, the United States outlawed the international slave trade on January 1, 1808, ending a practice that had been lawful in this part of the New World for nearly 200 years. But the institution itself remained legal in the United States until the Civil War.) In its international orientation, the early United States was situated in a particular context within the history of international society, that of a “British International Society” (BIS). Daniel Green (Chapter 7) outlines a period of British global predominance lasting between 1820 and 1860. Inside Europe, Britain operated a balance system with 4–5 other powers, but outside Europe, it propagated its own version of international society—a society girded by the principles of free trade, anti-slavery, and non-territorialist informal empire. The United States operated inside this order between, roughly, 1838 and 1860. From this perspective, the United States was a lesser regional power within a British order and tacked in its wake. In the years 1838–1860, the United States defied Britain and was aggressively pro-slavery and pro-slave trade and stubbornly embarked on territorial expansion. But the United States also embraced free trade and informal empire in ways that bolstered the British project. After the Civil War, America became more strident on its own behalf, and American practices began to impinge more on Europe. From the 1870s, it began to express a now more unified sovereignty, and its concept of sovereignty began to impinge upon nineteenth-century international rules and practices. Mikulas Fabry (Chapter 8) shows how U.S. policies spearheaded the process of replacement of dynastic solidarism with liberal pluralism as the dominant conception of the society of states. The new conception centered around a distinct notion of one basic principle of sovereignty—nonintervention in the domestic affairs of foreign states and led to distinctive U.S. policies concerning the recognition of governments, neutrality vis-à-vis internal conflicts abroad, and recognition of states. The American jurist Wheaton’s Elements of International Law (1836) reflected the dual nature of America’s engagement with international society. An English language version of Vattel’s Law of Nations absorbed entirely the European international law corpus but, at the same time, codified it for the use of diplomats and schooled it in American ways, presenting international law as grounded in states’ rights, as they were in the American Constitution. Further, it presented state-initiated war as an integral part of a state’s rights. Navari (Chapter 9) points to its adoption in every European

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legation where a diplomat might need a guide to contemporary practice and retells how its status as a basic guide, in turn, led to its reception in Asia, where the idea that a state had rights as a matter of law came to serve local needs of reform and resistance against the colonial practice. Next to humanizing the laws of war, and the idea of states’ rights, the most progressive development in the institutionalization of international society in the nineteenth century was international arbitration. Credit for it is often attributed to Elihu Root, Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign secretary, and it is associated with the period of American ascendancy in the Western hemisphere. But Root’s activism was merely the end of a process that had begun upon American independence. Often credited to American liberal genius, Mary Durfee (Chapter 10) demonstrates that arbitration was in fact rooted in European treaty law and the shared common law between America and Britain. Nor could America be understood as a rising power at its inception. A recent arrival to diplomacy, it was still in a process of decolonization. Arbitration emerged as a function of decolonization. The end of the nineteenth century brought the United States into the rank of Great Power, both in the capacities it possessed, absolutely and in comparison with other members of the society of states, and also in the acceptance by the American government of the legitimacy of the conception of the role as it had become understood among the other members of the society of states. David Clinton (Chapter 11) argues that America became a Great Power not merely in strength but in an understanding of what was required of such a power (an empire of its own in the first instance) but that this development was not a smooth or unbroken one. America was reluctant to engage for stretches of time, with a rush of change at the very end of the period under consideration. The final chapter by Barry Buzan and Richard Little brings the contributions together in an overall consideration of how the primary institutions that constitute international society affected, and were affected by, the emergence of the United States as an independent actor. It suggests that “neutrality” and “disengagement” tell only half the story. As the first state born within the transition toward modernity, the United States was an important player in that transformation, both in terms of the distribution of power and of the ideas constituting international society. References Adams, C. F. (2010). The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States. Kindle edition (Amazon Digital Services). Bull, H. (1977). The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. London: Macmillan. Bull, H. and Watson, A. (1984). The Expansion of International Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Buzan, B. (2014). An Introduction to the English School of International Relations. Oxford: Polity. Buzan, B. (2004). From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dunne, T. (1995). International Society: Theoretical Promises Fulfilled? Cooperation and Conflict, 30(2), 125–154. Elliot, J. H. (1972). The Old World and the New, 1592–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gong, G. (1984). The Standard of Civilization in International Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Herring, G. (2008). From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Policy Since 1776. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holsti, K. (2004). Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jackson, R. (2000). The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. James, A. (1999). The Practice of Sovereign Statehood in Contemporary International Society. Political Studies, 47(3), 457–473. James, A. (1978). International Society. British Journal of International Studies, 4(2), 269–288. Kaufman, J. P. (2021). A Concise History of U.S. Foreign Policy. Fourth edition. Lamtham: Rowman & Littlefield. Knudsen, T. and Navari, C. eds. (2019). International Organization in the Anarchical Society. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Knudsen, T. and Navari, C. eds. (2022). Power Transition in the Anarchical Society. London: Palgrave Macmillan. LaFeber, W. (2013). The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Volume 2: Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913. Revised edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mayall, J. (2000). World Politics: Progress and Its Limits. Cambridge: Polity Press. McDougall, W. A. (1997). Promised Land, Crusader State. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Mead, W. R. (2002). Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. New York: Routledge. Mearsheimer, J. (2001). The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W. W. Norton. Monroe, J. (1823). Seventh Annual Message to U.S. Congress (Monroe Doctrine). https://millercenter​.org ​/the ​-presidency​/presidential​- speeches ​/december​-2 ​-1823​ -seventh​-annual​-message​-monroe​-doctrine Perkins, B. (1995). The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Volume 1: The Creation of the Republic, 1776–1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Simpson, G. (2004). Great Powers and Outlaw States: Unequal Sovereigns in the International Legal Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schouenborg, L. (2014). The English School and Institutions. In Guide to the English School in International Studies. Edited by Cornelia Navari and Dan Green. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 77–89.

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Stivachtis, Y. A. (1998). The Enlargement of International Society. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Suzuki, S. (2009). Civilization and Empire: China and Japan’s Encounter with the European International Society. London: Routledge. Tucker, R. W. and Hendrickson, D. C. (1990). Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Oxford University Press. Watson, A. (1992). The Evolution of International Society. London: Routledge. Watson, A. (1984a). European International Society and Its Expansion. In The Expansion of International Society. Edited by Hedley Bull and Adam Watson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 13–32. Watson, A. (1984b). European International Society and Its Expansion. In The Expansion of International Society. Edited by Hedley Bull and Adam Watson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 127–142. Wheaton, H. (1836). Elements of International Law. 2 volumes. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard. Wight, M. (1952). British Colonial Constitutions 1947. Oxford: Clarendon. Wight, M. (1991). International Theory: The Three Traditions. Edited by Brian Porter and Gabriele Wight. Leicester: Leicester University Press/Royal Institute of International Affairs. Wight, M. (1977). Systems of States. Edited by Hedley Bull. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Wilson, P. (2012). The English School Meets the Chicago School: The Case for a Grounded Theory of International Institutions. International Studies Review, 14(4), 567–590. Wittkopf, E. R., Kegley C. W. Jr., and Scott, J. M. (2003). American Foreign Policy. Sixth edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. Zhang, Y. (1991). China’s Entry into International Society: Beyond the Standard of ‘Civilization’. Review of International Studies, 17(1), 3–16. Zoellick, R. B. (2020). America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy. New York: Twelve Publishers.

2 NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA’S ROLE IN GLOBAL HISTORY A Brief Cornelia Navari

The effective starting point for placing America in international society is America’s role in global history. What is formally known as “the expansion of international society” is the process by which a set of norms, practices, and principles, codified in Europe from the late Middle Ages, spread to encompass the entire globe. That expansion forms the skeleton of global history. Globalization was rolled out not exclusively but significantly through the transmission of political ideas, legal forms, and economic transformations originating in a European experience, which were implanted abroad and then, often, played back into Europe in adjusted versions and indigenous translations. America’s role in the processes of global history forms the backdrop to its role in international society. From its beginnings in the Age of Exploration in the sixteenth century, the globalizing process took two related but distinct forms. Initially, it was essentially colonial, centering on the seizure of coastal ports followed by the placement of trading companies, initially justified by a Christianising imperative that faded away as the search for gold and silver was replaced by the trade in goods—mercantilism replacing proselytism. During the nineteenth century, this form changed again: the trajectory shifted from mercantile colonialism to imperialism. Increasingly from the 1830s, the empires became, in A. G. Hopkins’ (2018) term, “territorialised”—the imperial powers turned from facilitating trading companies and factories in coastal ports to extending public goods across diverse regions and continents, bringing formerly remote areas under common security systems and common legal systems. The formal moment when colonies became empires is often signified by the Government of India Act, 1858, establishing the British Raj.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003334927-2

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Often justified in terms of a “civilising mission,” the process generally served the conceptions and interests of the metropolis. Models of “good governance” as understood by metropolitan elites were wheeled out and bolted onto local governing structures in the process of which colonial territories began to be treated as European crown lands and given over to white exploitation via donations of tenure, displacing natives and forcing them to claim rights from an alien crown. As part of the process, colonial economic structures would be integrated into metropolitan economies. That America was an integral part of this process cannot be denied. The original Spanish colonization of the Americas induced a rush for new “discoveries” that pushed European adventurers to plant flags around the globe. Later, and before America became the first “new nation,” it was the first de-colonizer, presaging the spate of decolonizations that followed, first in Latin America and later in Asia and Africa. Its Civil War achieved a mildly global status, in being closely watched by the Prussian generals who learned some of the techniques of “total war” from it. Following it, and paralleling the imperial powers in cadet form, it began the serious business of displacing indigenous peoples and placing settler communities in remote parts of what had been colonial territory. Nor could anyone deny its dynamic role in the process: the opening of Japan; Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points; its refusal to participate in what was arguably Britain’s last act as an imperial power (the attempt to reverse Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal)—were all worldforming events, initiated by America. America’s role in world history, at least its role in the nineteenth century, has not been well served by international historians. The diplomacy of the Civil War aside, diplomatic accounts of America’s nineteenth-century political interactions with the wider world are relatively sparse and have generally been written from the perspective of an imminent new Republican power and a spreader of democracy. There is no dearth of facts. It is more a matter of what Hopkins has called “a bifurcation in the imagination.” Recovering America’s place in global history requires a shift in focus, from an “­exceptional America” story to the perspective of a global history in which republican America played diverse roles, not all of which were those expected of a republican power. America Joined to World History: A Brief of the Nineteenth Century

America joined the process of globalization in the same manner as the rest of the non-European world—as the object of state-sponsored colonialism: By the end of the seventeenth century, Britain, France, and Spain had established promising and well-populated colonies in the Northern Hemisphere, while

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Spain and Portugal dominated in the south.1 It first joined world history as a political object during the Seven Years’ War, a war of competition among the European Great Powers, and the world’s first genuinely global conflict, which saw an exchange of colonies in the New World and Britain’s emergence as Europe’s off-shore balancer, along with its ascendancy across the North Atlantic. During the succeeding Revolutionary War, America was as much a rebellious colony as a harbinger of liberty—in his Speech on Conciliation with America, Edmund Burke argued, with some justice, that had Britain allowed the colonists integration into the British system of privileges, the Revolution would not have occurred. The American geographer D.W. Meinig (2004, 385), in his monumental Shaping of America, has characterized the separation from Britain not as a struggle of an emerging new nation against a foreign imperializer but as “a civil war over the treatment of overseas ‘Englishmen.’” During the first half of the nineteenth century, America followed the pattern of settler states. Despite its putative independence, it remained largely dependent on its former colonial master. It needed Britain for the sale of American tobacco, cotton, and grain and for the securing of trade routes, not merely across the Atlantic, but in the Mediterranean against piracy and in the Caribbean to protect the West Indian trade and domestic coastal trade routes from French privateering, which became intensive during and after the Napoleonic wars. Following the  French Revolution, French privateers were a menace to British and American shipping in the western Atlantic and the Caribbean. America’s posture of neutrality, so vaunted by the Founding Fathers, was of little avail during the French revolutionary wars. After 1803, following Britain’s declaration of war on France, Americans became subject to the British impressment of British-born naturalized U.S. citizens and to Napoleon’s Berlin Decree, which forbade trade with Britain, as well as the British riposte—a blockade of French-controlled Europe that authorized the British Navy to seize ships violating the blockade. Both Britain and France refused to honor American neutrality or any right of peaceful trade with enemies, resulting in the War of 1812, followed by the lesser-known QuasiWar, a brief conflict between France and the United States. Nor were fears of re-colonization at an end: the Louisiana Purchase was primarily intended to keep the port of New Orleans, which was the outreach of French territories in North America, out of British hands. That it included most of 1  Fuller accounts may be found in Julian Go, Patterns of Empire: the British and American Empires, 1688 to Present (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Edward J. Davis The United States in World History (Routledge 2006), both American. They join Britain’s A.G. Hopkins American Empire: A Global History (Princeton 2018), the magisterial account, and Japan’s Shigeru Akita (ed), American Empire in Global History (Routledge 2022), the latter integrating the national focus with global trends.

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the  drainage basin  of the  Mississippi River  and stretched from the  Great Lakes to the  Gulf of Mexico  and from the  Appalachian Mountains  to the Rocky Mountains was considered something of a side bonus at the time. The purchase itself was embedded in global strategizing: a French friend anxious over the British–French rivalry advised Jefferson to offer to purchase France’s Louisiana territory to keep it out of British hands; the purchase was financed by a British bank, and Napoleon sold the territory on Britain’s declaration of war, not only to keep it from falling into British hands but also to raise funds for his adventures. The War of 1812 was, in global terms, a minor episode in a bitter Anglo–French naval rivalry and a small part in the larger story of denying France mastery of Europe. During the first half of the nineteenth century, America was demonstrating its world-historical potential not as a rising power but as a model and encouragement for the wars of liberation in South America. Between 1808 and 1826, all of Latin America except the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico slipped out of the hands of the Iberian powers who had ruled the region since the conquest. Simon Bolivar’s proposed league of all American republics with a common military, a mutual defense pact, and a supranational parliamentary assembly was inspired by the American example. America returned the honor and recognized the new Latin American states as they became independent, signing commercial treaties on a mostfavored nation—that is, on a non-colonial basis, with all of them. America’s first statement of potential global effect was in the context of Latin America. The  Monroe Doctrine, a  United States  policy that opposed  European colonialism  in the  Americas, warning that any such attempt would be viewed as “the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States,” was issued on December 2, 1823, at a time when nearly all Latin American colonies of Spain and Portugal had achieved, or were at the point of gaining, independence. In its origin, it reflected a fear that the Spanish exodus would be followed by re-colonization attempts by other European powers and was an expression of dependency and concern rather than of self-confidence and power. The term “Monroe Doctrine” was not coined until 1850. It had little effect on the way the European powers treated their colonies in Latin America. Nor did it presage any active policy of the United States with regard to Latin America. President Ulysses S. Grant’s attempt to annex the Dominican Republic, in 1870, failed to get the support of the Senate, and it was not until the Anglo–Venezuelan border dispute of 1895 when U.S. Secretary of State Olney claimed that the Monroe Doctrine gave the U.S. authority to mediate border disputes in the Western Hemisphere, that American policy first seriously impinged on any aspiration of a Great Power. America’s colonial policy, in the degree to which it had one, was dictated by its position as a subaltern to British colonial policy, which in

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the first part of the century had taken a mildly liberal turn as far as the Pacific was concerned (see Green below). Britain had dictated Open Doors, as reflected in treaties concluded with the  Qing dynasty in China after the First Opium War (1839–1842), which it applied thereafter at the Berlin Conference of 1885, which declared that no power could levy preferential duties in the Congo. With regard to Hawaii, Britain acted as the protector of Hawaiian independence, in effect practicing Open Door with respect to the Pacific islands, and the United States followed suit, working conventional treaties of reciprocity and friendship in 1849 and 1875, which allowed whalers and sugar producers from Britain as well as the United States rights to settle and carry out trade. It could scarcely do otherwise, since, in 1847, it had no navy. Canning in 1824 had alerted King George to the interest “both of Russia and the United States of America” in the islands “which may ere long become a very important Station in the trade between the N.W. coast of America and the China Seas” (Gough 2016, 70), which led Britain to forestall any such eventuality. Perry’s mission to Japan in 1853 was to gain an agreement with the Japanese Government for the protection of shipwrecked or stranded Americans but not only Americans. It aimed to open one or more ports for supplies and refueling that other powers besides the United States could enjoy, acting in effect as an agent for the Great Powers. The United States officially declared its own Open Door policy in 1899 and 1900 when it called for the protection of equal privileges for all countries trading with China and for the support of Chinese territorial and administrative integrity. Its own imperial policy during most of the nineteenth century followed the Russian pattern of conquering a land empire. The slow Russian conquest of the heart of Central Asia had begun in the early nineteenth century; Russian colonial policies sent military fortresses, settlements, and decrees of intent into Kazakh lands. A series of laws were introduced by the Russian Empire, abolishing the local indigenous Khan Government and instituting segregated settlement policies, resulting in numerous uprisings against colonial rule. Until the 1870s, Russian interference left native ways of life intact and local government structures in place. But after the conquest of  Turkestan  in 1865 and the consequent securing of the frontier, Russia gradually expropriated large parts of the steppe to provide lands to Russian farmers who began to arrive in large numbers, with consequent effects on local social and political structures. The “expansion” of America, as it came to be known, originally followed the European pattern of state-sponsored colonization on a township basis. New England towns chartered groups to move west, into the Ohio Valley, originally to establish settlements, who would work treaties with natives to allow them to farm. After the Revolution, the federal government took over colonial treaty rights but continued the same practice: the use of the treaty to establish borders and prescribe conditions of behavior between

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the parties was continued but now between individual sovereign American Indian nations and the U.S. president, who held the federal treaty right. With the Louisiana Purchase, this changed: When America took over France’s colonial rights, it in effect, “owned” the land between the Mississippi and the Rockies, which became American public land. In accordance with the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Indians became domestic, dependent tribes. Treaties continued to be worked, but they were treaties donating rights to Indians to subsist within reservations accorded to them by American authorities. After 1865, following the Civil War, American policy went further, calling for all Indians either to assimilate into the American population as citizens or to live peacefully on reservations, codified in Title 25 of 1871. The armies that had been raised for the Civil War became the frontier force authorized to enforce its regulations. Thereafter began the Indian Wars, notably Red Cloud’s War and later the Great Sioux War of 1876–1877, by groups that refused to accept American authority over their lands. It was on the basis of their mutual land expansions that Alexis de Tocqueville made his famous 1835 prediction that America and Russia would one day compete for global dominance. Inward expansion was not the only similarity between Russia and the United States. In foreign policy, they shared France and Britain as potential foes. At the outbreak of the Crimean War, their shared interests produced pro-Russian sympathies, expressed in much of the American press—the general public supported the Russian side against the tripartite alliance (Turkey had been enlisted by Britain and France to join the war against Russia). Officially, the United States stayed neutral during the war, but it was not inactive. Washington sent food and material goods to Russia and helped the Imperial Navy by building its warships in New York’s massive shipyards. American doctors flocked to Crimea, where most of the world’s press focused its attention, in order to help Russia’s overwhelmed medical establishment. America’s support would bear fruit during its Civil War when Russia sent warships to Northern ports, partly to show support for the union’s antislavery cause (Russia had abolished its own serfdom in 1861) and partly to avoid being bottled up in the Black Sea by British warships in case London intervened in the American war. The other outcome of the Crimean War was the Alaska Purchase. The Russians, smarting from their defeat in the Crimean War, concluded that they would not be able to defend their American territories from a British attack and began to search for a buyer. An American purchase would give the Russians a buffer zone between their Siberian territory and Britain’s North American Arctic territory (to become Canada). Two years after the American Civil War, in 1867, Washington—broke and bloodied—bought Alaska from the Russians. The purchase effectively removed Russia as a player on the North American continent.

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Both empires—one democratic, the other autocratic—had a looming crisis of modernity: in one, the abolition of slavery, and in the other, the ending of serfdom. In 1861, Alexander issued the Emancipation Edict by which more than 23 million people received their liberty. Serfs gained the full rights of free citizens, including the rights to marry without having to gain consent, to own property, and to own a business. But access to land was controlled. The serfs had to work for the former landlord for two years. The nobles kept nearly all the meadows and forests and had their debts paid by the state, while the ex-serfs paid 34% over the market price for the shrunken plots they kept. At the same time, ex-serfs were only very slowly proletarianized: despite industrialization, Russia was still overwhelmingly rural and backward at the start of  World War I.  Moscow  and  St. Petersburg  were the only cities with any significant industry, and the major industrial town of Imperial Russia was Tampere in Finland, which had been developed by Scottish entrepreneurs. The peasant revolts of 1905–1906, in which 3,000 manors were temporarily taken over by the peasants that farmed their lands, marked the failure of the efforts of imperial reform and promised ill for the Revolution of 1905 that had inspired them. The abolition of slavery as a specific project of civilization first appeared in the 1815 Declaration of the Powers on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which was “considered, by just and enlightened men of all ages, as repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality” and regarding which “the public voice, in all civilized countries, calls aloud for its prompt suppression.” Often treated as a uniquely American experience, in global terms, slavery was a universal practice and the abolitionist movement was strongly trans-Atlantic. What was “special” about America was the number of slaves: about 1 million in a population of 5.2 million in 1800. What was also exceptional was that it required a war to cease the practice. Between 1811 and 1863, 12 states in Europe and South America practicing slavery had abolished it by legal means and without recourse to force. The worldhistorical event concerning slavery was not the American Civil War but the Haitian uprising of 1804, an indigenous rising of slaves against their Spanish masters, which hurried the abolitions in Europe and South America and led to the fears of mass uprisings in America and to a determined southern policy of avoiding abolition. American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere seems so much a matter of manifest destiny that it seems always to have existed. In fact, it did not. The Latin American revolutions were autonomous revolutions that were inspired more by the French Revolution than the American Revolution. Simon Bolivar was educated in Paris, not provincial Boston. From 1815 until the mid-1820s, the United States maintained official neutrality in the wars of Spanish and Portuguese colonies against the Iberian empires, not support. On-going negotiations over the Floridas and the desire to avoid war with

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Spain and its allies had led presidents Madison and Monroe to enforce the Neutrality Acts (1817, 1818) against privateers and others who would aid the Spanish–American rebels. Spanish–American schemes for the liberation of Cuba worried southern legislators in the United States lest insurgency in Cuba provoke “race war” (as had Haitian independence in 1804) and slave rebellion in the American South. President Millard Fillmore (1850– 1853) focused attention on the dangers of annexing Cuba in his message to Congress in 1852 (Loveman 2010, 75). The United States had no fleet capable of enforcing the exclusion of European influence in the hemisphere and no army capable of defending Spanish–American republics against European intervention. The United States relied on the predominance of British commerce and its naval power and French reluctance to engage in recolonizing, to make good the Monroe Doctrine. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) stipulated that neither Britain nor the United States would obtain or maintain any exclusive control or unequal advantage in the use of a future canal through the Isthmus of Panama. Captured by a commander of the British Navy and delivered to Honduran authorities in Trujillo, the American adventurer Walker’s ambitions to establish an American slave state in Nicaragua ended before a Honduran firing squad in 1860. The Civil War led to an intense period of diplomatic activity, primarily to ensure that Britain did not come to the aid of the southern confederation. Contemporary political realism suggests that Britain might have better allied with the confederation in 1860, instead of declaring neutrality, to impede America’s prospects as a rising power. On the British side, Richard Little has pointed, instead, to the rising sentiment within the Foreign Office for nonintervention (Little 2007; see also Green below). More simply, it would have been difficult at the time to conceive of America as a rising power. At the onset of the Civil War, it had no army and no navy; it was a weak federation, and at its close, it had a debt of $2.6 billion, which it financed by printing unbacked “greenbacks,” which could only be used domestically. It was the results of the Civil War that brought America more closely into line with its centralized monarchical European “rivals.” The victory of the North confirmed the single political entity of the United States: besides freeing more than a million enslaved Americans, the war created a more powerful and centralized federal government. The old decentralized republic in which the federal government had few direct contacts with the average citizen except through the post office became a nation that taxed people directly, created an internal revenue bureau to collect the taxes, drafted men into the army, increased the powers of federal courts, created a national currency and a national banking system, and confiscated 3 billion dollars of personal property by emancipating slaves. Eleven of the first 12 amendments to the Constitution had limited the powers of the national government; 6 of the next 7, beginning with the 13th amendment in 1865, vastly increased

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national powers at the expense of the states. Deudney characterizes the United States before the Civil War as a “states-union” and only after it as a federal republic “with an intensified national identity” (1995, 220). Charles Tilley’s (1985) dictum that “war makes states,” which he concluded from the experience of the European states through the eighteenth-century wars of Absolutism, could equally apply to America as a result of the Civil War. The war’s effects on the economy were no less far-reaching. The institutions and ideology of a plantation society and a slave system that had dominated half of the country before 1861 went down with a great crash in 1865 and was replaced by the institutions and ideology of free-labor entrepreneurial capitalism.  Government-issued currency became popular, wartime spending dramatically boosted Northern industry and infrastructure, and the federal government subsidized the settlement of the West. The federal authorities extended the tariff system to protect Northern industrial development (formerly opposed by the South) and provided industrial subsidies, which led to the development of the transcontinental railways. The scale of its enterprises magnified by 4 and 5 times. U.S. businessmen began monopolizing the devalued sugar markets in Cuba. In 1894, 90% of Cuba’s total exports went to the United States, which also provided 40% of Cuba’s imports. After the Civil War, America’s idea of itself as an entity in the world began in a new register. There appeared the idea of America as a new Roman Empire and as a player on the world stage, ideas which had scarcely featured in the public discourse before McKinley or before Roosevelt had fired up the public imagination—the “new Romans” vaunted by the Founding Fathers had been Republican Romans, not Imperial Romans. A new image of America civilizing barbarians in the Imperial Roman fashion went on display in the heroic classicism of the 1893 world convention in Chicago. In 1880, the building of the New Navy began to be encouraged by the publication of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History in 1890, which so impressed Navy Secretary Benjamin F. Tracy (1889–1893) that he aspired to the building of a navy equal to that of Great Britain’s, proposing initially the construction of no less than 200 ships of all types. The explosion of the U.S. battleship the Maine in Havana Harbour in February 1898 was the spark that sent the nascent American Navy on its first course of foreign conquest. The term “yellow journalism” coined to characterize the sensational journalism in the circulation war (beginning in 1895 between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Heart’s New York Journal) centered on Spanish policy in Cuba. But the wider object was Spain’s imperial reach. Theodore Roosevelt, then Assistant Navy secretary, had already quietly positioned the navy for an attack on Spain’s Pacific fleet. Created in 1868 to protect American commerce with China and Japan, the Asian Squadron hurriedly left Hong Kong on April 27, two days

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after the United States declared war, under the command of George Dewey, attacking and decisively defeating the Spanish fleet in the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1, 1898. The Spanish–American war finished Spain’s presence in the Western Hemisphere and established America as effectively the hegemonic power in the Western Hemisphere, with an Asian presence in the Philippines. The Roosevelt Corollary amended the Monroe Doctrine in December 1904, now declaring that the United States would intervene as a last resort to ensure that other nations, including the new states, in the Western Hemisphere fulfilled their obligations to international creditors and did not violate the rights of the United States or invite “foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations,” anticipating regular interventions in the smaller republics of Central America. The Spanish–American war made it certain that a U.S.-built canal would be cut through the Isthmus of Panama. It stimulated enthusiasm for a great U.S. Navy, which soon grew from fifth to second place among the world’s war fleets. It prompted drastic reform in the U.S. Army, which had been poorly prepared for war, losing far more men to exposure and disease than to enemy weapons. It also advanced the career of the country’s first world-minded president, Theodore Roosevelt. Within a few years of the war’s conclusion, the United States had made the Caribbean a U.S. lake. By 1900 America’s “insular empire” had taken shape: Hawaii, Samoa, Guam, Wake Island, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Cuba. Considered by Americans as little in the context of the grander European colonies, it was exactly those colonies in a microcosm. America used the “standard tools” of European expansion and the same governing devices (Hopkins, 525–531). More relevantly, the islands were turnstiles of globalization, joining continents. The declaration of the Roosevelt Corollary and the establishment of the Cuban protectorate were considered on balance by Britain as preserving British trade and commercial interests in the West Indies and allowed Britain to pass the trident of protecting the sea lanes of the Western Atlantic to America. For America, the islands allowed America footholds across the Pacific and established it as a Pacific power of sorts, from which point it began to take an interest in Asian affairs. But it had no land base in the Pacific. Its new Pacific holdings paradoxically made America more dependent on Britain and Britain’s land presence in India and on France’s position in the Vietnam peninsula, both of which provided the bulwark for America’s Asian holdings. The Manila Bay attack also revealed the risk that faced American ships through severe damage or shortage of supplies, as they were 7,000 miles from the nearest American harbor. It meant that the putsch in 1893 by a cabal of American businessmen in Honolulu with the support of an American squadron (ordered to do so by the U.S. Minister to Hawaii. Stevens) would never be reversed, and it

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would have a profound effect on navy strategy and American foreign policy for the next several decades, including a brutal suppression of the Philippine uprising, lasting from 1899 to 1913 under various leaders. From a world-historical perspective, America’s entry into World War I on the side of the allies was the late arrival of a junior partner. It was not until the spring of 1918 that the United States could actually engage in hostilities. American commanders used the same flawed tactics which the British, French, Germans, and others had abandoned early in the war and many American offensives were not particularly effective, resulting in high casualties without noticeable military success. The main American contribution was in supplies, raw material, and money, and the strengthening of the Allies’ strategic positioning. The oft-signaled American “rise” was as much a matter of others’ decline. The Russian Revolution had wiped out imperial bonds, to which British institutions were major subscribers (the Mexican nationalizations of 1938 would complete the damage). The war had depleted the French Treasury, and the Ruhr adventure caused the franc to plummet. (France only stabilized its currency at one-fifth its pre-war value in 1928 and by a feat of heroic proportions.) By contrast, the war had been good to America, speeding its already impressive industrialization and turning its direction—from the mechanization of agriculture to the production of enormous quantities of munitions at unheard-of prices. It produced an economic boom lasting from 1914 to 1918. The United States succeeded in raising tax revenues to equally unheard-of levels, and New York emerged after the war as London’s equal, if not her superior, in financial assets. French Prime Minister Briand would warn the French Chamber’s Foreign Affairs Committee of “another force, which is beginning to appear in the world … an economic or financial force … able to be substituted for the means of oppression” (Navari 1992, 83). European Practices and Habits in Transmission

While America was acting in the world, the world was shaping America. Nineteenth-century America was a European settler society shaped by European practices and institutions. The landing at what came to be known as Jamestown was not a novelty but part of a common practice in mercantilist Europe. Settlement was undertaken by a joint-stock company, in the case of Jamestown, the Virginia Company, chartered under James I on April 10, 1606,  with the goal of establishing a settlement to exploit the potential resources of new-found lands. In 1617, John Rolfe took his wife Pocahontas to London to advise Old World investors of the value of a New World tobacco crop. That America was a settler society with European roots raises questions that reflect upon the “expansion” of international society. Among them is

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the question of whether America was “joining” international society when it sent Benjamin Franklin to London as America’s first diplomatic envoy or whether it was already part of international society. Franklin may have had to take recourse to Vattel’s international law text to apprise himself of the details of diplomatic representation, but he had no difficulty gaining access to Vattel or understanding Vattel, or indeed applying Vattel, not least because Pufendorf, Vattel’s illustrious predecessor, had preceded him in America. The Founding Fathers were well acquainted with Pufendorf’s international law, not only because it was, for most of the eighteenth century, the standard international law text, but on account of his analysis and justification for a federal form of government that “leagues, compacts and confederations offered viable modes of political cooperation among sovereign bodies” (LaCroix 2010, 19). Original America was a federation of states along the model of the Dutch republics and the Swiss Bund. The ex-colonies cherished their original founding documents, and they were separated not merely by geographical distance and difficulties of travel but by differences of temper, religious thought, and custom, mostly acquired from their various origins in the Old Country, as well as a provincialism of outlook resulting from their separation from it. Even in the crisis of war with the French, they cooperated poorly. The rights of the federation over basic aspects of national union, such as cross-state trade and a common foreign policy, were constantly in question, even after the Civil War, and the rights of the ex-colonies to question the basic nature of the federation went without saying. As late as 1856, with the outbreak of the Crimean War, the New England colonies considered the possibility of re-joining Britain, in protest against the federation’s alignment with Russia. The Civil War itself evidenced its unsettled nature: pre-Civil War America would have qualified as a “quasi-state” in Robert Jackson’s (1993) contemporary term. On its independence, America adopted wholesale the diplomatic devices of Europe. The Model Treaty, intended to guide the new states’ commercial relations, reflected the existing American trade arrangements worked by Britain with France and Spain and its adoption formalized traditional practices: free ports to guarantee free goods; freedom of neutrals to trade in normal goods and agreement on a contraband list. Treaties with American Indian tribes after the Revolution followed exactly the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War between the U.S. and Great Britain: the negotiations with Indian tribal chiefs recognized one another as equals and ended in a mutually signed pact between chiefs and presidents which had to be approved by the U.S. Congress. The practice of equality in treaty-making only ended when America took possession of France’s American colonies with the Louisiana Purchase, after which the Indian tribal peoples became colonial subjects.

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Merchants of North America had been trading with Morocco and its neighbors since 1673 under the protection of Britain and in accord with the capitulation treaties that Britain had worked with Turkey and its vassal states. The first capitulation treaty, the model for the later treaties of all the European powers, was that of 1536 between Francis I of France and Suleyman of  Turkey. It allowed the establishment of French merchants in Turkey, granted them individual and religious liberty, and provided that consuls appointed by the French king should judge the civil and criminal affairs of French subjects in Turkey according to French law. During the eighteenth century, nearly every European power had obtained capitulations in Turkey along similar lines, and in the nineteenth century, the United States followed suit. One of the first acts of the new American republic was a treaty with Morocco establishing American rights in Morocco, including capitulations. Like the other states holding capitulations, the United States refused to allow Turkey unilateral abrogation, a demand Turkey would raise at the close of the Crimean War. The first modern codification of the laws of war, and the initiation of the humanitarian law of war, was the Lieber Code, formulated by Francis Lieber, an American adventurer with legal training at the request of Abraham Lincoln’s general-in-chief Hallek. Promulgated at the height of the American Civil War (1861–1865), it proposed a set of rules to govern the conduct of hostilities between the armies of the North against those of the Confederate States. The main sections concerned martial law; military  jurisdiction; and the treatment of spies,  deserters, and  prisoners of war. Scarcely original, Lieber copied much of it from the third volume of Grotius’ On the Law of War and Peace, on the jus in bello (conduct in war), and he elaborated it in accord with the humanitarian impulse arising in Geneva, notably the humane treatment of populations in occupied areas as long as the population did not resist military authority and the forbidding of “no quarter” to the enemy (i.e., killing prisoners of war). (But it is noteworthy that he also introduced innovations of his own, notably the idea of a Civil War as a war between two equal belligerents, each side bearing the same responsibility to follow the laws of war and to treat one another as just belligerents instead of, as in the European dynastic case, as traitors to be extirpated; it also contained an explicit prohibition on rape; and it would be used as one of the main sources for the Hague Regulations of 1907: Clinton 2003.) American jurist Henry Wheaton’s Elements of International Law, published in 1836 with eight subsequent American editions, and the standard American guide to diplomacy and law, likewise drew most of its legal theory from Grotius and Pufendorf, alongside his international law practice that was drawn from Vatell’s The Law of Nations. His codification of practice, which introduced a strong dose of legal positivism into his law, was

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influenced by a year of study at Poitiers in 1804, the legal faculty whose works contributed so largely to the Napoleon Code, just then being promulgated, which Wheaton set to and translated for American use, providing American jurisprudence with its first taste of European legal positivism— the studied view that what states agreed was law and that international law was a public law made and enforced by sovereign states that were lawmakers. George Washington provided his legatees with a model of arbitration in his last will and testament. The 1799 testament urged that all disputes (if unhappily any should arise) shall be decided by three impartial and intelligent men, known for their probity and good understanding; two to be chosen by the disputants each having the choice of one and the third by the two of those. But his model of arbitration drew on European treaty law and the shared common law tradition between America and Britain. Arbitration as a diplomatic practice developed from merchant practice, codified in 1698 when the British Parliament passed the first Arbitration Statute. The provisions of the Jay Treaty of 1794, designed by Alexander Hamilton, which specified three joint commissions to deal with disputes over boundaries, compensation due British creditors for obligations incurred by Americans before the Revolution, and questions arising from Britain’s treatment of American shipping in the war with revolutionary, drew from it as well as from British prize law (Fraser 1926). The notion that the European races constituted the apogee of civilization, one of the products of the Enlightenment, had been given a sociological grounding by August Comte in his The Course of Positive Philosophy (1830–1842) that laid out three stages of civilization. America’s version of the civilizing mission melded progressivism with imperialism and is well recorded in William Leuchenberg’s (1952) classic “Progressivism and Imperialism.” The darker side became evident in Roosevelt’s Lamarckian hierarchy of the races: that there were “superior and inferior peoples possessing differing responsibilities and privileges and that force was frequently needed to accomplish peace among men as among nations” (Burton 1965, 104). According to Teddy Roosevelt America’s new colonial subjects in Cuba and the Philippines were of inferior stock and had to be brought up to a level closer to that of the protectorate power. This rhetoric changed in the run up to America’s participation in World War 1, evident in the propaganda directing its participation: America’s entry on the side of the Allied Powers left racism aside (at least temporarily) and employed democratic– individualist principles. According to the new vision, the progress of civilization depended on a claimed “common British US history in which from

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Runnymede to Lexington whether in England or America the struggle … has always been toward the same goal—personal liberty from autocratic rule” (Allerfeldt 2008, 319). On America’s conception of itself as a Great Power, Britain was the model—as the provider of a Pax Romana. President Woodrow Wilson hoped that Britain and America could manage the New World order together, a hope dashed when the Senate refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty. Other powers recognized America as a Great Power on the same terms that they recognized one another. Britain invited the United States in 1900 to join Russia, Italy, Japan, France, Austria–Hungary, and Germany in the Eight-Nation Alliance to suppress the Boxer Rebellion and maintain foreign concessions in Qing Dynasty China, on the grounds of its possession of the Philippines. The continental powers considered this as little more than Britain bringing in a subaltern to support its imperial position. France acknowledged America as a Great Power, reluctantly, when its own means were insufficient to force Germany to comply with the Versailles arrangements, and it had to rely on American bond issues to secure the reparations owed to it.

References Allerfeldt, K. (2008). Rome, Race, and the Republic: Progressive America and the Fall of the Roman Empire, 1890–1920. The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 7(3), 297–323. Burton, D. H. (1965). Theodore Roosevelt’s Social Darwinism and Views on Imperialism. Journal of the History of Ideas 26(1), 103–118. Clinton, D. (2003). Tocqueville, Lieber, and Bagehot. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Deudney, D. H. (1995). The Philadelphian System: Sovereignty, Arms Control, and Balance of Power in the American States-Union, Circa 1787–1861. International Organization 49(2), 191–228. Fraser, H. (1926). Sketch of the History of International Arbitration. Cornell Law Review 11(2), 179–208. Gough, B. (2016). Brittania’s Navy on the West Coast of North America. Vancouver: Heritage. Hopkins, A. G. (2018). American Empire: A Global History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jackson, R. (1993). Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LaCroix, A. A. (2010). The Ideological Origins of American Federalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Leuchtenburg, W. (1952). Progressivism and Imperialism. Mississippi Valley Historical Review 39(3), 483–504. Little, R. (2007). British Neutrality Versus OffShore Balancing in the American Civil War. Security Studies 16(1), 68–95.

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Loveman, B. (2010). No Higher Law: American Foreign Policy and the Western Hemisphere Since 1776. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Meinig, D. W. (2004). The Shaping of America, a Geographical Perspective on 500 years of History: Volume 4 Global America 1915–2000. New Haven: Yale University Press. Navari, C. (1992). Origins of the Briand Plan. Diplomacy and Statecraft 3(1), 74–104. Tilly, C.(1985). State Making and War Making as Organized Crime Africa. In P. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer, T. Skocpol eds., Bringing The State Back In (pp. 169– 191). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

3 THE AMERICAN FOUNDING AND THE SOCIETY OF STATES David C. Hendrickson

When the 13 British colonies in North America fought for their independence from the British Empire, their leaders had pronounced ideas about the European state system. They were transplanted Europeans, mostly drawn from Great Britain but including emigres from a host of northern European nations, including France, Germany, Holland, and elsewhere. They had imbibed English ideas of government but drew from a much wider range of sources in their thinking about international politics. In a letter of 1783 to the Congress of the Confederation, John Adams wrote that the ideal foreign minister needed an education in classical learning, and in the knowledge of general history, ancient and modern, and particularly the history of France, England, Holland, and America. He should be well versed in the principles of ethics, of the law of nature and nations, of legislation and government, of the civil Roman law, of the laws of England and the United States, of the public law of Europe, and in the letters, memoirs, and histories of those great men, who have heretofore shone in the diplomatic order, and conducted the affairs of nations, and the world. (Adams 1854, 8:38) Adams, a voracious reader, was singularly learned in that corpus of knowledge, but many others, known to history as the Founding Fathers, had immersed themselves in it as well. This trove of learning was relevant not only to the conduct of the United States in its external relations but also in the construction of their own federal union.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003334927-3

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In the history of international thought, and especially of international cooperation, the experience of the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries hardly makes a ripple. The students who turned to the history of internationalism (Hinsley 1967, Watson 2009, Mazower 2012, Ikenberry 2020, Ghervas 2021) focused their entire attention on European thinkers, at least until Woodrow Wilson arrived on the scene in the twentieth century. This posture, I think, is myopic, for we find in the early American experience a close investigation and creative use of a whole range of problems in international thought. The United States, in the common telling, was a nation in its early years isolated from the European system; in fact, it was an unprecedented federal union deeply enmeshed in the Atlantic state system. It experienced acutely the problem of devising a system of cooperation among refractory states. The most misleading myth about American history, which most Americans carry around in their heads, is that “the nation” was instantaneously formed on July 4, 1776, and thereafter commanded the dominant loyalty of “the American people.” That is not so. This was the “seed-time” of American nationality, not its full-grown phase. Nationalism only established its dominance during the Civil War, fought “four score and seven years” after the Declaration of Independence. The first gathering among Virginians and Carolinians and Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers and New Englanders was among people who hardly knew each other because their external relations had been across the Atlantic to Britain. Each went into the fight with Great Britain with the independence of their colony foremost in their minds. They could only do it together, of course, being weak if standing alone, but their encounter was transactional and was made with keen attention to their own freedom and independence. Their first association, the Articles of Confederation, was styled not as a nation-state but as “a firm league of friendship” among the states, which bound them to assist each other against attack. American national identity, as historian John Murrin suggests, was “an unexpected, impromptu, artificial, and therefore extremely fragile creation of the Revolution” (Murrin 2018). The American sections were actually very different in character, “as different as Russia and Turkey,” wrote one delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The white people of New England and Virginia, representing the antipodal attitudes of the Eastern States (New England) and the “Southern Interest,” were the descendants of opposing sides in the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century. In the South, slavery was deeply entrenched; in Massachusetts, the institution was abolished before the war was over. The “worldviews” of northern and southern leaders, together with their economic interests and security concerns, often clashed, requiring painful compromises if the union were to be established and persist. In the absence of such compromises, American leaders believed they faced the

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Europeanization of American politics, with disunion inevitably producing foreign intervention and protracted sectional war, ending surely under the boot of some fortunate conqueror. The Federal Constitution was offered to the world as a way of arresting this dynamic, that is, as an answer to the war problem. Ideological Origins

In their contest with Great Britain from 1763 to 1775, colonial Americans had appealed to the “rights of Englishmen,” especially the right not to be taxed save by their own representatives. They began the controversy with an appeal to the status quo, especially to the “immutable statutes and tutelary laws,” found in their charters (Tucker and Hendrickson 1982). But revolutionary leaders soon broadened the appeal. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. This movement from “the rights of Englishmen” to the “rights of man” was significant. Americans invested in their Revolution ideas of world-historical importance. They felt that applying these ideas to the construction of new governments in the New World would show that governments dependent on the people were much better at securing liberty than the monarchies of Europe. Jefferson especially appealed to the law of nature in the Declaration, though characteristically employed language that gave that idea a new twist. He called it “the law of nature and of Nature’s God.” This was a bit like his writing in the same document “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to describe the inalienable rights that individuals possessed, improving on Locke’s “life, liberty, and estate.” Back of the appeal to “Nature’s God” laid the claim by which religious skeptics like Jefferson met religious fanatics in the eighteenth century. God gave us reason to figure this out; they spit back at the persecutors; you yourself commit the impiety by, in effect, denying the heavenly gift, making everything depend

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on faith rather than reason. Alexander Hamilton would later split dramatically from Jefferson over a host of questions, but they both imbibed respect for the law of nature and of nations. “Apply yourself without delay to the study of the law of nature,” a precocious Hamilton wrote in 1774 (Hamilton 1961, 1: 86). “Faith and justice between nations,” Hamilton later remarked, “are virtues of a nature the most necessary and sacred. They cannot be too strongly inculcated, nor too highly respected. Their obligations are absolute, their utility unquestionable” (Hamilton 1904, 4: 463–65). We are accustomed to looking at the ideological inheritance of the Founders as a sort of competition between John Locke and Niccolò Machiavelli, individualism and communitarianism, liberalism and republicanism. This prism, however, distorts things, for the dual commitment to liberal and republican principles was the most distinctive feature of late eighteenth-century American thought (Banning 2014). The framing also elides what the most important influence on American thought on international relations was, which consisted of the thinkers or “publicists” who had elaborated the laws of nature and nations, of whom Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf, and Emer de Vattel were the leading lights. These writers were received by the Founders in ascending levels of authority. Vattel, author of The Law of Nations: Principles of the Law of Nature Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns (1758), was at the top, the consummate expositor of what the Founders called the modern law of nations. Pufendorf had given the law of nature its most satisfactory formulation, correcting Hobbes on crucial points, in his Of the Law of Nature and Nations (1672). Grotius, in his Rights of War and Peace (1625), had been the first to “break the Ice,” raising for a Europe then in the throes of the Thirty Years’ War the proposition that everything is insecure in the absence of law. The law of nations, especially as it was reformulated by Pufendorf and Vattel, was based on the law of nature. What this was received slightly different formulations from the publicists and the philosophers, but at the core of it was a set of simple propositions. Hobbes found the best summary of the law of nature to be the Golden Rule. “Do not do to another, which thou wouldest not have done to thyself.” In holding that the law of nature was identical to the law of nations, Hobbes provided the essential intellectual foundation (Pufendorf and Vattel would provide the scaffolding) of what became the law of nature and nations. Every nation has the right to self-protection, but it must also respect the rights of others. You were to seek peace, resorting to war only in self-defense. You were to claim no right for yourself that you would not concede to others. You were to do all the good you could to others without injury to your own interests.

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The gist of the law of nature, as Pufendorf (1729, 57) observed, was that no man hurt another, who doth not assault and provoke him; that everyone allows others to enjoy their own goods and possessions; that he faithfully perform whatever shall be covenanted for, and voluntarily promote the interest and happiness of others, in all cases where a stricter obligation doth not interfere Vattel then more fully applied these strictures to the relations among nations, positing among nations, as of individuals, a natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of their own perfection. The American Founders followed this teaching. James Madison, then Secretary of State, defined the law of nations as “those rules of conduct which reason deduces, as consonant to justice and common good, from the nature of the society existing among independent nations; with such definitions and modifications as may be established by general consent” (Madison 1806). The laws of nature, as they were elaborated by Hobbes and Pufendorf, did not rest their authority on Holy Scripture or customary law; they were “theorems,” as Hobbes put it, “concerning what conduceth to the conservation and defence of themselves.” Observance of the law of nature became, for its enthusiasts, the best way to respond to the security dilemma. It both ensured the right of self-preservation and abjured steps that provoke “a reciprocal desire of hurting us” (Pufendorf 1729). These theorems were not received from “on high” but were a product of reason and experience. In this, they differed sharply from previous conceptions of natural law, which posited a “system of eternal and immutable principles radiating from a source that transcends earthly power (either God or nature)” (Wight 1992). The statesmen of the founding generation accepted this philosophical framework, positing a society of states with rights and duties toward one another. While they may have been Lockean liberals in certain respects and Machiavellian Republicans in others, they got their international theory from Vattel and from the law of nature tradition that he carried forward (Lang 1985; Onuf 1993; Hendrickson 2003). Independence and Slavery

The key aim of the Declaration of Independence, as historian David Armitage has noted, was to justify the independence of the 13 colonies from the British Empire and to declare them as “FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES,” with the “full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of right do.” As Armitage notes, the act of separation was also an act of joining, a “declaration of interdependence,” that marked the

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entry of the United States into the society of states. Whereas observers today have seen the Declaration as a revolutionary document intended to consign tyrannies to the flame, like the French revolutionaries of 1792, it was, as Armitage argues, “decidedly unrevolutionary” in crucial respects. That is, the authors of the Declaration attested to the importance of observing the law of nations and considered it vital “neither to transgress, nor to fall short of those Maxims” by which states were to regulate their conduct toward one another (Armitage 2001). The existence of slavery in the American states obviously contradicted Jefferson’s emphasis on a universal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The American Revolution marks the beginning of an age that, under law-of-nature principles, became conscious of slavery as an enormous wrong. Jefferson acknowledged that in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence. There Jefferson had execrated “the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain” for his complicity in violating “the most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.” Jefferson’s heated condemnation of slavery and the slave trade did not appear in the final version of the Declaration, but was struck out, he later recalled, “in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it” (Jefferson 1984, 18). White Americans in the northern states agreed with Jefferson on the evils of slavery, and most of the northern (or eastern) states moved toward abolishing slavery in the years after independence. In 1783, the Massachusetts Supreme Court granted the petition of Quock Walker, a slave who sued his owner for his freedom. The Massachusetts Declaration of Rights stated that “all men are born free and equal.” By law, the court held, slavery was abolished in Massachusetts. Walker was freed. It was in the southern colonies where slavery had been entrenched, with enslaved blacks constituting 60% of the population in South Carolina and 40% in Virginia. Southern white elites, almost all of them slaveholders, acknowledged in this era that the institution of slavery was a great wrong. They spoke in favor of emancipation at some future day but did not think it could be done now. They feared a slave revolt and knew it was possible because of the manifest cruelties of the institution. The “last stab to agonized affection,” in Jefferson’s phrase, was when in 1775 royal authorities in Virginia sought to enlist African slaves in war against their white masters. Southerners, with few exceptions, believed that the states themselves should decide the question of emancipation, not the general government. From the first meetings of the Continental Congress, southern delegates made clear that any attack on slavery by the northern states would cause the southern states to go their separate ways. If their ownership of slaves were

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questioned, said Thomas Lynch of South Carolina in 1776, “there is an End of the Confederation” (Hendrickson 2003, 139). Faced with this defiant stance, the northern states acquiesced. Adams later described the reaction of northerners to the South and slavery; in 1776 and after, he had “constantly said … to the southern Gentlemen, I cannot comprehend this object; I must leave it to you. I will vote for forcing no measure against your judgements” (Hendrickson 2009, 121). Noninterference by the general government with slavery where it existed became the settled rule of the American union under both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. The southern leaders made clear that union was not possible on any other basis. Independence, Confederation, and Alliance

In the year before the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776), the Second Continental Congress confronted a series of interlocking problems. On August 23, 1775, King George III of Britain declared the colonists to have “proceeded to an open and avowed Rebellion,” which was understood in North America to be a declaration of war against them. To secure their independence, they would need foreign assistance. To put their acts on good authority, they needed to constitute new governments in each of the 13 states. To have a chance of winning the war, they needed to form a union. The great problem, then, was which would go first: independence, union, foreign alliance, or new state constitutions? There was a sense in which each of these was a condition precedent for one of the others, and the Continental Congress spent a year turning the question of the proper sequence inside out. John Adams summed up his idea of the logical sequence: Every Colony must be induced to institute a perfect Government. All the Colonies must confederate together in some solemn Compact. The Colonies must be declared free and independent states, and Ambassadors, must be Sent abroad to foreign Courts, to solicit their Acknowledgment of Us, as Sovereign States, and to form with them, at least with some of them commercial Treaties of Friendship and Alliance. When this was written (June 9, 1776), it became apparent that no such systematic procedure was possible. Instead, the Continental Congress decided to do all four things together and at once (Adams 1977, 4: 244–245). That the American colonists would succeed in these four separate endeavors provoked a lot of skepticism in Great Britain, “the mother country.” The trans-Atlantic argument, borrowing from these family metaphors, was like a stern mother telling the kids that they can’t do this or that, and the kids answering, defiantly: “Yes, we can!” British and loyalist writers had predicted

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that new Republican governments in America, shorn of the monarchical and aristocratic elements that gave balance to the British Constitution, would end up making citizens less free than subjects (Tucker 1931, 381–384). As they drafted their state constitutions, Americans sought to show the contrary (Wood 1969). Hostile commentators in Britain had also argued that the former colonies would be incapable of maintaining their independence and would soon find themselves in the thrall of the French monarchy. The development of an American foreign policy that sought peace and commerce with all nations, and entangling alliances with none, was an answer to that charge. “America will grow with astonishing Rapidity,” John Adams argued. “Peace which is her dear Delight will be her Wealth and Glory” (Adams 1977, 6: 348). The policy of independence and no entangling alliances was later associated with Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address (largely drafted by Hamilton) and Jefferson’s 1801 First Inaugural, but Adams gave the policy its first sustained exposition in the debates over foreign policy in 1776. Jefferson and Hamilton, he recollected in 1805, “ought not to steal from me my good name and rob me of the reputation of a system which I was born to introduce, ‘refin’d it first and show’d its use,’ as really as Dean Swift did irony” (Adams and Rush, 1966, 38–39). The Key charge the British leveled at the outset of American independence was that the colonies would fall out among themselves if they broke the British connection. Most Britons found the idea of a durable American union very nearly absurd, as likely as oil mixing readily with water. The “friends of America” among the Whigs feared such disunity, and Tory ministers made America’s division the basis of their strategy to reclaim the authority of the King-in-Parliament. All metropolitan observers had heard reports of how refractory the colonists had long been to reasonable requests from the mother country. How was it possible that these rebellious characters should cooperate among themselves? In 1776, as David Ramsay recalled, “Our enemies seemed confident of the impossibility of our union; our friends doubted it; and all indifferent persons, who judged of things present, by what has heretofore happened, considered the expectation thereof as romantic” (Niles 1876, 391). American leaders were conscious that the North American colonies had been fought over on more than one occasion in the past, and they feared becoming the “football” or “sport” of European politics. Individually, the newly independent states of the American union were weak and could not hope to gain their independence and make their way without cooperating with their sister states. If they began fighting among themselves, they might lose it all. “Union and Independence” thus became their motto. Independence meant, above all, their common freedom from British rule and the avoidance of dependence on the wars and politics of Europe; union meant, above all,

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the reconciliation of differences so as to achieve the classic aims of the federative system—peace among “the several states in the union of the empire,” preparedness against and immunity from the wiles and threats of foreign powers (Hendrickson 2003). From the beginning, these imperatives were joined at the hip. They were, at the same time, aspirations and not facts. While union and independence were in one sense mutually supportive, weakness in the one gnawed at the foundations of the other. During the war, the weakness of the union continually threatened the objective of independence, and the practical dependency on foreign assistance threatened to undermine the union. After the war, the inability of the union to secure compliance in the states with the treaty of peace made almost nugatory the achievement of the negotiators and seemed to put it in the power of any state to implicate the others in effective postures that might end in war and break the union. The states of North America, their votes counted equally in Congress, were successful in gaining French support. In 1778, the United States signed two treaties with France, one devoted to commercial matters, the other a treaty of mutual defense (something that Adams had not anticipated as necessary in 1776). France agreed to make the liberty and independence of the 13 colonies the “essential and direct end” of the alliance, but the treaty contained an entanglement: the United States agreed to guarantee France’s possessions in the West Indies “from the present time and forever against all other powers.” French support for the rebels was self-interested—they hoped to weaken their historic rival—but it was also infused with jealousy and anger toward England. French support was crucial during the war of independence; Madison later commented that it was to the principle of the balance of power, as reflected in the rivalry between Britain and France, that “we owe perhaps our liberty” (Farrand 1937, 1: 448). By 1783, the year of the Peace of Paris, the former colonies had successfully declared their independence, had secured foreign recognition, had joined in alliance with Europe’s leading power, and had written new constitutions in all the states. But their union was faltering. The Articles of Confederation were based on the principle of state sovereignty. Congress had no independent power of taxation but relied on requisitions from the states, just as the British monarchy had done under the old empire. Congress had been vested with responsibility for the war effort in the Articles of Confederation, but it had few powers of execution, and its efforts perforce rested on the efforts of the states, who often proved resistant to congressional requests. Attempts to reform the Articles by giving the Congress an independent revenue from the taxation of imports had failed. From this unpromising soil, with the confederation falling apart, with no money from the states arriving at the common treasury, arose the movement to the Philadelphia convention in the summer of 1787.

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The Federal Constitution and International Theory

Deliberations at the Federal Convention reached a sharp impasse by late June, with apparently irreconcilable differences over representation. In July, a compromise was reached. The North would not accept the Constitution if slaves were counted fully for purposes of representation, as that would give slaveholders an unfair advantage and even encourage slavery. The South would not accept the Constitution if slaves were not counted at all; they demanded and got the three-fifths clause, giving three votes for every five slaves to the southern states. On that formula “the people” were represented in the House of Representatives, though the clause was also a gauge of the relative wealth of the states. As part of the same compromise, the states were equally represented and given two seats in the Senate. It is often thought today that the South supported equality of representation for the states in the Senate, but that is anachronistic. In 1787, southern delegates were confident that they would receive the biggest population growth in the future; at the time, the tiny states were in the Northeast, so the equality of votes in the Senate gave New England more power, not less. Solving the problem of representation was the predicate for accomplishing anything at Philadelphia; only after that happened did the outlines of the new government form (Hendrickson 2003). From the earliest days in the struggle for independence, American leaders had seen that their interest was to be separate from the European system, but this did not mean that they were indifferent to the larger problems of international politics. In fact, they were very nearly obsessed with them. In the debate over the Constitution, the opposing sides made great use of “international theory.” In their arguments for and against the Constitution, they stated the main contentions of today’s theorists of “structural realism” and “the democratic peace.” The Federalists argued that in the absence of a closer federal tie, the states would inevitably fall out with one another. As a consequence of this division, they speculated, regional confederacies would form that would entertain relations with one another indistinguishable from those prevailing in the European state system. This development—inevitably accompanied by perennial rivalries, standing armies, and war—would jeopardize the fragile growth of republican government on the American continent. In the absence of union, these confederacies would likely attach themselves to the interests of foreign powers, and the American continent would become, like the petty republics of Greece and Italy, the scene of foreign involvement and perpetual war. With unity, as Publius observed, extensive military establishments cannot … be necessary to our security. But if we should be disunited, and the integral parts should either remain separated, or, which is most probable, should be thrown together into

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two or three confederacies, we should be, in a short course of time, in the predicament of the continental powers of Europe—our liberties would be a prey to the means of defending ourselves against the ambition and jealousy of each other. Alexander Hamilton, the author of those words, disparaged the idea that the republican character of the American states would prevent them from falling into conflict, and he identified a series of problems—disputes over the settlement of accounts from the war, conflicting claims to the western territories, differing views of commercial regulation—that would set them to fighting if disunited. Commerce, he observed, had been the cause of many wars in Europe’s past; it might yet be so in America’s future (Federalist 1961, Nos. 6–8). James Madison of Virginia joined in Hamilton’s analysis and refuted the idea that geographical distance would save the American states from depredations. Though “the distance of the United States from the powerful nations of the world gave them the same happy security” enjoyed by Great Britain in relation to the continent of Europe, it ought never for a moment be forgotten that they are indebted for this advantage to their Union alone. The moment of its dissolution will be the date of a new order of things … Instead of deriving from our situation the precious advantage which Great Britain has derived from hers, the face of America will be but a copy of that of the continent of Europe. It will present liberty everywhere crushed between standing armies and perpetual taxes (Federalist 1961, No. 41). In opposition to these views, the Anti-Federalists set forth the propositions of what is now called Democratic Peace Theory. The plague of war was a consequence of aristocracy and monarchy, they argued, institutions which the newly democratic American republics had shunned. From “the deranged brain of Publius,” they claimed, had emerged dangers that were “imaginary—mere creatures of fancy.” “The causes of half the wars that have thinned the ranks of mankind, and depopulated nations,” said James Monroe in the Virginia Convention, “are caprice, folly, and ambition: these belong to the higher orders of governments, where the passions of one, or of a few individuals, direct the fate of the rest of the community. But it is otherwise with democracies, where there is an equality among the citizens.” Tied together by the umbilical cords of commerce, and restrained from ambition by their democratic character, the American states had no motive for war and every motive for peace (Elliot 1888, 3: 212, 209; 2: 223–224, 2: 396–397; Storing 1981, 4: 84). Anti-Federalist opposition to the Constitution had the fatal weakness that the opponents couldn’t agree on the proper remedy, though most

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acknowledged that something needed to be done to repair the confederation. Their anxieties coalesced around one great theme: their fear of “consolidation,” or “empire,” or “despotic centralization.” The Constitution, said one critic, was “a hasty stride to Universal Empire in this Western World.” Anti-Federalists looked upon “the amazing extent of country” and stood slack-jawed at the idea that it might be governed from a common center. “It is impossible for one code of laws to suit Georgia and Massachusetts,” wrote one Anti-Federalist, yet it seemed undeniable to him that “the new system” was “a consolidation of all the states into one large mass” (Storing 1981, 4: 25, 31; Bailyn 1993, 1: 449; Kenyon 1985, ixl–xlvii). Federalists, by contrast, put themselves in the “peace plan” tradition associated with the grand design of Henry IV, which the Pennsylvanian James Wilson said had sketched “but the picture in miniature of the great portrait to be exhibited”: “a system of government, for large and respectable dominions, united and bound together in peace, under a superintending head, by which all their differences may be accommodated, without the destruction of the human race!!” (Bailyn 1993, 1: 866). Only a few Federalists invoked the memory of Henry IV, but all the advocates of the Constitution posed the issue of ratification as a choice between war and peace, with rejection ultimately signaling the former disastrous outcome. Whereas the American Revolution had arisen out of fear of “tyranny anticipated,” the American Constitution was hatched under the widespread belief that the states and sections of the union had half a dozen things to fight about, and fight about it they would, absent a stronger federal tie. This novus ordo seclorum was projected as the antitype of the old European system, hitherto ruled by a law in which peace was a duty but war a frequent occurrence (Hendrickson 2003; Deudney 2007). It tells us something important about the early United States that so much of the argument over its fundamental charter was expressed in terms of “IR theory.” Behind the dissolution of the union always lay the danger that the North American states and sections would find themselves “in the predicament of the continental powers of Europe”—that is, smack dab in the middle of a raging state system. Lurking behind the new nation was a state system in embryo, with each movement toward centralization or decentralization provoking the antagonism of the other. The fear that the union would fall apart, the outlines of the European system emerging in its place, was not simply a fear of the Founding generation. It emerged repeatedly over the next seventy years, culminating in the war that the makers of the Constitution had intended to avert (Hendrickson 2009; Kreitner 2020). Ludwig Dehio, in his survey of the European state system over four centuries, argued that one could relate all events in its history “to the two principles of unity and diversity,” both of which were continually in play, but neither of which ever received full expression, because always checked by the

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other (Dehio 1962, 19). The same is true of the United States, especially in the years between the making of the Constitution and the onset of the Civil War in 1861. Americans did not enjoy the alternative of withdrawing from the “state system” because they were squarely in the middle of one. This condition explains why their “domestic” discourse was filled throughout with language of a decidedly internationalist tenor, why there emerged in discussions of the union doctrines of the balance of power, nonintervention, the equality of states, and defense against aggression. These discourses played out against the backdrop of two contrary specters: disintegration into interstate anarchy or submission to a universal empire. Given this backdrop, the categories of thought radiating outward from the union had a decidedly internationalist tenor, in which the problem of cooperation among refractory states was of fundamental importance. Ideas commonly thought of as a special preserve of twentieth-century internationalism are given continual registration in this context. While the name—internationalism—did not yet exist, just about everything that came to be associated with the internationalist idea did exist. But instead of a “security community” or “international regime,” the thing was called a “federative system” or a “federal union.” At the root of “the federal principle,” writes one political scientist, was the notion of a covenant or foedus (its etymological root). This and “synonymous ideas of promise, commitment, undertaking, or obligating, vowing and plighting one’s word” were joined together with two other things: “the idea of cooperation, reciprocity, mutuality,” and “the need for some measure of predictability, expectation, constancy, and reliability in human relations” (Davis 1978). These three concepts—commitment, reciprocity, predictability—would become closely identified with twentieth-century ideas of international cooperation, and they were endlessly elaborated in debates over the nature and character of federal union from 1776 to 1861. A similar definition (serviceable, like the previous one, for “internationalism” as well) sees the federative principle as emphasizing “the political relation of adjustment among equals rather than the political relationships of inferiority and superiority, and methods of law rather than methods of force” (Binkley 1935, xix). Both federalism and internationalism, in their classic iterations, have a dualistic aspect in which particularity and commonality are, as it were, simultaneously reaffirmed. They propose union partly to aggregate power and partly to maintain distinctness. Each may be conceived as “an exercise in the difficult art of separation,” as a “coming together to stay apart,” as proposing devices “to cope with the problem of how distinct communities can live a common life together without ceasing to be distinct communities” (La Selva 1996, 40, 46; Forsyth 1981). Today, a state system is normally defined as simply a grouping of independent sovereignties that have regular interactions with one another and whose

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relations are ultimately regulated by the threat of war. Earlier understandings were different. In his classic study of the political system of Europe, the German historian Arnold H.L. Heeren employed the term “system of states” to designate “the union of several contiguous states, resembling each other in their manners, religion, and degree of social improvement, and cemented together by a reciprocity of interests” (Heeren 1833, xii). Heeren’s depiction reminds us that the European system of his day had elements of sociality or cooperation as well as egotism and conflict. At various moments in the nineteenth century, it could be and was seen at various moments as a working “federative system” (Gulick 1967; Schroeder 1994; Hendrickson 2009, 69–77). Whereas the conventional understanding of the European state system has minimized the elements of sociality and felt allegiance to common norms, the reverse error has been made in the American case, and conventional understandings have stressed the element of common nationality and shared aspirations to the exclusion of the elements of conflict and fractured identities that existed in continental politics from the beginning. Contrary to the common mythology—that America enjoyed an epoch of “free security” until the cataclysmic upheavals of the twentieth century—the denizens of the 13 states faced a very serious security problem, to which the Federal Constitution proved to be a lasting though not altogether permanent remedy. America, indeed, formed a system of states not only in the sense identified by Heeren but also in the more familiar and existential sense: a system in which the danger of war lurked in the background as a potential way in which state and sectional differences would get resolved. Like the European system at various points in its history (Bull 1966), the American system had varying elements of “sociality” and “anarchy,” and the periodic sense that the states stood on the verge of disunion and war co-existed with elements of common purpose and cooperative endeavor. The Civil War of 1861–1865 obliterated the threat of disunion and created a new order of power in North America, in effect, a second republic and a new nation, but in the preceding dispensation from 1776 to 1861, sovereignty was often held in suspense. Neutrality and International Society

The first years of the government inaugurated by the Federal Constitution were dominated, in foreign policy, by the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon. Britain, still dominant on the high seas, remained in occupation of forts in the Northwest, including present-day Detroit and Niagara. The terms of the peace treaty were not adhered to by either side, the infractions of each justifying the retaliations of the other. Spain held New Orleans, the gateway to European markets for produce coming down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. France, kicked out of North America by Britain in 1763,

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had ambitions to return. Powerful Indian nations existed on the fringes of white settlement, which in 1789 was still overwhelmingly concentrated on territory east of the Appalachian Mountains. From the first moments of the war between Britain and France in 1793, President Washington had determined a posture of neutrality. He issued a proclamation to that effect on April 22, 1793. The maintenance of neutrality, however, proved to be an extremely challenging task. If the United States reached an accommodation with Britain, as it did with the Jay Treaty in late 1794, it earned the enmity of France; if it were complaisant to France, it earned the enmity of Britain. This dilemma would press upon the American government for 20 years, raising questions of extraordinary complexity. Immediately on the outbreak of war, Hamilton drew up twenty-odd questions that had to be answered in defining the U.S. posture. Was the 1778 treaty with France still valid? Ought it to be provisionally suspended? If valid, did its execution entail involvement in the war? What rights and duties did the United States possess if it wished to maintain a true neutrality? In answering these questions, President Washington rejected Jefferson’s bid for peaceable coercion and accepted Hamilton’s preferred course of military preparation and diplomatic negotiation, yielding the Jay Treaty. Without the law of neutrality as a standard, however fraught, diplomatic settlement would have been impossible (Tucker and Hendrickson 1990). Early American thinking was closely attuned to the European balance of power. For Alexander Hamilton and the High Federalists, French ambitions threatened to establish a universal empire. After the blood-letting and terror of the Jacobins under Maximilien Robespierre, the succeeding French government (called “the Directory”) emerged, according to Hamilton, as the most flagitious, despotic, and vindictive government that ever disgraced the annals of mankind … a government marching with hasty and colossal strides toward universal empire, and, in the execution of this hideous project, wielding with absolute authority the whole physical force of the most enthralled, but most powerful nation on earth. “Swelled to a gigantic size and aping Rome, except in her virtues,” France plainly aimed at “the control of mankind” (Hamilton 1961, 21: 382, 408). “Nothing,” wrote the Federalist Fisher Ames (1983, I: 494–95), is wanting to the solid establishment of a new universal empire by France, that should spread as far, last as long, and press as heavily on the necks of the abject nations, as that of Rome, but the possession of the British navy. France, whenever she can get access to her enemy, is already irresistible.

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Jefferson and the Republicans, in contrast to the Federalists, worried less about French ambitions than about Britain’s simultaneous attempt to establish the empire of the seas, possession of which was to be contrasted with the empire of the land to which France was aspiring. Jefferson thought safety for the United States lay in a due balance between them. In the early days of the French Revolution, the Republicans reviled the “confederacy of kings” that had attempted to crush the Revolution and attributed the cause of the war to this and not to the revolutionary remodeling of Europe that, for Hamilton and the Federalists, was the distinguishing mark of French diplomacy. France’s revolutionary decrees announcing assistance “to all peoples who wish to recover their liberty” were found by Hamilton to be “little short of a declaration of War against all Nations, having princes and privileged classes,” equally repugnant “to the general rights of Nations, to the true principles of liberty, [and] to the freedom of opinion of mankind” (Hamilton 1961, 15: 59–62). Jefferson did not disagree with the principle that Hamilton enunciated, as he acknowledged that the French had been “guilty of great errors in their conduct toward other nations,” especially in seeking “to force liberty on their neighbours in their own form” (Hendrickson 2009, 31). But he did disagree with Hamilton on responsibility for the European war, finding that the despots of Europe, not the Republicans of France, had committed the first violation of the principle of nonintervention. Jefferson’s commitment to a Vattelian framework is also shown in his recognition policy, which privileged the principle of national independence as the key criterion that outsiders should respect (Fabry, in this volume). In holding to the law of nations, Jefferson clashed famously with French envoy EdmondCharles Genêt in 1793. When Jefferson pointed out that France had violated the law of nations and U.S. neutrality by fitting out privateers in American ports, Genêt replied: I do not recollect what the worm-eaten writings of Grotius, Puffendorf, and Vattel say on the subject. I thank God I have forgotten what these mercenary jurisprudists have written on the rights of nations at a period when they were all enchained. (cited in Harcourt 1863, 122) Jefferson, in despair, complained that Genêt had never read a book in that branch of science. For the Founders, the belief that the principles underlying the American experiment might have universal applicability existed happily alongside the idea that the United States had neither a right nor a duty to bring others to an appreciation of these truths through force. Rather than being contradictory, these ideas originated in the same school of thought. Like religious intolerance, the denial of legitimacy to other forms of government was seen

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to cause perpetual war, and such a condition, it was thought, made for an international environment hostile to the preservation and spread of free institutions. For all their arguments over the French Revolution, Hamilton and Jefferson understood that very well; both subscribed to Hamilton’s derisory observation in the Federalist that “in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution” (Federalist 1961, No. 1). In his 1796 Farewell Address, George Washington observed: “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible.” Washington’s advice, often taken as indicative of “isolationism,” also attested to American membership in a larger community. “Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all,” he advised. “Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it?” American leaders not only professed fidelity to the law of nations—the mother of multilateral norms—but also sought to infuse into the law of nations “a spirit,” in President James Madison’s words, “which may diminish the frequency or circumscribe the calamities of war” (Madison 1816). This posture is distinguishable, on the one hand, from an outlook, customarily identified with realpolitik, that sees the interstate world as an anarchy in which moral and legal restraints are irrelevant; and, on the other, from a cosmopolitan or revolutionary outlook that looks forward to the transcendence of the state system and its replacement by a new ordering of human relations (Wight, 1992; Bull, 1977). This commitment to “the constitutional tradition in diplomacy” (Wight, 1966) may be considered the characteristic worldview of American leaders at the time of the American Founding. Legacies

In the mid-twentieth century, early American statecraft came to be seen as “isolationist,” but this terminology misleads. The desire to knock off the shackles of commercial restriction or the belief in the radiating power of the American example is not well summarized by the isolationist moniker. Nor is the doctrine of neutrality, which required for its preservation a punctilious adherence to the law of nations; it was an engagement with the legal order of the European system in order to preserve a degree of detachment from its politics and wars. But the principal objection to “isolationism” in characterizing U.S. policy is the misleading image it fosters of a United States cut off from the larger currents of the Atlantic world. Americans wanted, certainly, to have their own independent system and not be subject to the whims of the European powers; the impulse to be separate from the European system pre-dates Washington’s Farewell Address and is coterminous with the

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Revolution. But from 1776 to 1815, especially, the relative strength of the European powers as compared with the fledgling United States made that a long-term hope rather than an immediate reality. For better or ill, the United States could not be isolated from the larger currents of the Atlantic state system at the tail end of the eighteenth century; they were in it, and they wanted to reform it. If “isolationism” is but a half-truth, the attribution of “unilateralism” to early American diplomacy and statecraft is yet more misleading. When the focus shifts to the construction of the federal union, we see a pattern of interaction and of thought readily identifiable with what would now be called “multilateralism.” The “unilateralist” depiction neglects how “the federal system and many of the goals of the Founding Fathers emerged within the context of ideas about international order” (Rosenberg 1998). The subscription to the law of nations—intrinsically a multilateral commitment—does not figure in this analysis, nor the federal government’s pronounced tendency toward treaty-making with both European states and Indian nations. Most striking of all is that the features of American foreign policy that are characteristically seen as unilateralist actually grew out of the multilateral imperatives associated with the creation and maintenance of the federal union. It was the imperious needs associated with the construction of an American system based on internationalist ideals that, more than any other factor, dictated separation from the European system. Throughout the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, an alliance with France was intolerable to New England, and an alliance with Britain was intolerable to the South; “no entangling alliances” was in Jefferson’s mind the key recipe for avoiding a domestic divorce (Jefferson 1905, 9: 405). If Americans were to escape the birth cycle, threatening to freedom, by which war made the state, and the state made war, they needed both independence from the European system and the union of American republics. As John Quincy Adams would summarize this ethos, America’s “glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield; but the motto upon her shield is Freedom, Independence, Peace” (Hendrickson 2022, 16). In its early years, American thought saw the emergence of a unique and progressive discourse regarding relations among states, one that stood in marked counterpoint to the European system (Onuf 1998). The development of twentieth-century American internationalism cannot be fully grasped without attention to this eighteenth- and nineteenth-century background. The history of America’s federal union was important to Woodrow Wilson, acknowledged by all to be the seminal figure of twentieth-century internationalism. By casting his adversaries as “nullifiers,” Wilson invoked it at the most critical moment in the fight over the League of Nations. “It was of this

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that we dreamed at our birth,” Wilson said on presenting the Covenant of the League to the Senate. That was his whole case in a nutshell. References Adams, J. (1850). The works of John Adams. Edited by Charles Francis Adams. 10 vols. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850–56. Adams, J. (1977). The papers of John Adams. Edited by Robert J. Taylor et al. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Adams, J. and B. Rush (1966). The spur of fame: Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, 1805–1813. Edited by John A. Schutz and Douglass Adair. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001. Ames, F. (1983). Works of fisher ames. Edited by W. B. Allen. 2 vols. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Armitage, D. (2001). The declaration of independence: A global history. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bailyn, B. (1993). The debate on the constitution. New York: Library of America. Banning, L. (2014). Founding visions: The ideas, individuals and intersections that created America. Edited by Todd Estes. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Binkley, R. C. (1935). Realism and nationalism, 1852–1871. New York: Harper & Row. Bull, H. (1966). Society and anarchy in international relations. Diplomatic investigations. Edited by Martin Wight and Herbert Butterfield. London: George Allen & Unwin, 33–50. ———. (1977). The anarchical society: A study of order in world politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Davis, S. R. (1978). The federal principle: A journey through time in search of a meaning. Berkeley: University of California Press. Deudney, D. (2007). Bounding power: Republican security theory from the polis to the global village. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dehio, L. (1962). The precarious balance: Four centuries of the European power struggle. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Elliot, J. (1888). The debates in the several state conventions on the adoption of the federal constitution. 5 vols. 2d ed. New York: Burt Franklin. Farrand, M. (1937). The records of the federal convention of 1787. Rev. ed. 4 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press. The Federalist. (1961). Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Edited by Jacob E. Cooke. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Forsyth, M. (1981). Unions of states: The theory and practice of confederation. New York: Holmes and Meier. Ghervas, S. (2021). Conquering peace: From the enlightenment to the European Union. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Grotius, H. (1625/2005). The rights of war and peace. Edited by Richard Tuck. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. Gulick, E. V. (1967). Europe’s classical balance of power. New York: Norton. Hamilton, A. (1961–79). The papers of Alexander Hamilton. Edited by Harold C. Syrett et al. 26 vols. New York: Columbia University Press.

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———. (1904). The works of Alexander Hamilton. Edited by Henry Cabot Lodge. 12 vols. New York: G.P Putnam’s Sons. Harcourt, W. V. (1863). Letters by Historicus on some questions of international law. London: Macmillan. Heeren, A. H. L. (1833). A manual of the history of the political system of Europe. London: D.A. Talboys. Hendrickson, D. C. (2003). Peace pact: The lost world of the American founding. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. ———. (2009). Union, nation, or empire: The American debate over international relations, 1789–1941. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. ———. (2022) Freedom, independence, peace: John Quincy Adams and American foreign policy. Washington, DC: John Quincy Adams Society. Hinsley, F. H. (1967). Power and the pursuit of peace: Theory and practice in the history of relations between states. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ikenberry, G. J. (2020). A world safe for democracy: Liberal internationalism and the crises of global order. New Haven: Yale University Press. Jefferson, T. (1984). Writings. Edited by Merrill D. Peterson. New York: Library of America. ———. (1905). The writings of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh. 20 vols. Washington, DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association. Kenyon, C. A. (1985). The antifederalists. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Kreitner, R. (2020). Break it up: Secession, division, and the secret history of America’s imperfect union. New York: Little, Brown. Lang, D. (1985). Foreign policy in the early republic: The law of nations and the balance of power. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. La Selva, S. V. (1996). The moral foundations of Canadian federalism. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Madison, J. (1806). An examination of the British doctrine, which subjects to capture a neutral trade, not open in time of peace [Ante-January 8, 1806], Founders Online. ———. (1816). Eighth annual message, December 3, 1816. Mazower, M. (2012). Governing the World: The History of an Idea, 1815 to the Present. London: Penguin. Murrin, J. M. (2018). Rethinking America: From empire to republic. New York: Oxford University Press. Niles, H. (1876). Principles and acts of the revolution in America. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. Onuf, P. and N. G. Onuf (1993). Federal union, modern world: The law of nations in an age of revolutions, 1776–1814. Madison: Madison House Publishers. ———. (1998). A declaration of independence for diplomatic historians. Diplomatic History, 22: 71–83. Pufendorf, S (1729). Of the law of nature and nations. Translated by Basil Kennett. 4th ed. London: Lawbook Exchange Ltd. Rosenberg, E. S. (1998). A call to revolution: A roundtable on early U.S. foreign relations. Diplomatic History, 22: 63–70. Schroeder, P. W. (1994). The transformation of European politics, 1763–1848. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Storing, H. J. (1981). The complete anti-federalist. 7 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tuck, R. (1999). The rights of war and peace: Political thought and the international order from Grotius to Kant. New York: Oxford University Press. Tucker, J. (1931). Josiah Tucker: A selection from his economic and political writings. Edited by Robert Livingston Schuyler. New York: Columbia University Press. Tucker, R. W. and D. C. Hendrickson (1982). The fall of the first British empire: Origins of the war of American independence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. (1990). Empire of liberty: The statecraft of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Oxford University Press. Vattel, E. de. (1758/2009). The law of nations, or, principles of the law of nature, applied to the conduct and affairs of nations and sovereigns. Edited by Richard Whatmore and Béla Kapossy. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. Watson, A. (2009). The evolution of international society. Edited by Barry Buzan and Richard Little. London: Routledge. Wight, M. (1966). Western values in international relations. Diplomatic investigations: Essays in the theories of international politics. Edited by Martin Wight and Herbert Butterfield. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. (1992). International theory: The three traditions. Edited by Gabriele Wight and Brian Porter. New York: Holmes and Meier. Wood, G. S. (1969). The creation of the American republic, 1776–1787. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

4 AMERICA AND THE OTHER REVOLUTIONS Neutrality and Non-engagement in Latin America and Greece Yannis A. Stivachtis

The early American Republic faced challenges during the period of the revolutions of 1820–1830, as its government attempted to uphold revolutionary and republican values while navigating diplomacy with former allies and enemies. Europe in the eighteenth century was in a constant struggle for power, with France and England especially struggling for prominence. The founders of the United States sought to warn future leaders that it would be in the country’s interest to stay clear of European conflicts, but without, at the same time, breaking any economic ties with countries on the European continent and its surroundings regions and, if possible, to expand them. The first U.S. resident legation was established at Tangiers in 1796 to allow American traders to participate in the lucrative Mediterranean trade. Indeed, evidence suggests that “the U.S. economy was at least as dependent on foreign trade in 1790 as it was two hundred years later” (Mead 2002, 14), and much of that trade, as well as the entire U.S. economic system, “was inextricably bound up in the British economic system” (Mead 2002, 17). America’s first deep engagement with the norms of the international society concerned the rights of neutrality, formulated during the War of 1812, when the United States insisted that it had the right to stay aloof from the protracted and globalizing conflict between Britain and revolutionary France, in which conflict both parties had seized cargoes destined for the other and accorded no rights of unconditional shipping. The term “neutrality” and its contents were defined by the U.S. Executive Branch: in his oftenquoted farewell address, President George Washington warned the leaders of the new country to “steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion

DOI: 10.4324/9781003334927-4

America and the Other Revolutions 55

of the foreign world.”1 John Adams, the second U.S. president, also wrote in a letter in 1805 of the principles in foreign affairs that he advocated and followed as a president stating that we should make no treaties of alliance with any European power; that we should consent to none but treaties of commerce; that we should separate ourselves, as far as possible and as long as possible, from all European politics and wars (cited in Adams 2010). Recognition was another matter; it implied engagement, and it concerned all branches of government. Neutrality could not serve on the occasion of the Latin American revolutions, ensuing from 1815, where it was a case of America’s relationship with revolutionary neighbors breaking with imperial power. In the case of Latin America, America’s ideologies of Classical Liberalism, Classical Republicanism, and Christian Brotherhood came forward and led to new principles of friendship, equality, and recognition among equals. But in the case of the Greek revolution, ensuing from 1821, the outcome was rather different. The Republic maintained neutrality, left the pursuit of liberal principles to private citizens, and pursued principles that were more realpolitik than liberal, concerning primarily the preservation of America’s commercial advantage and interests. The South American Revolutions and Recognition

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, “recognition,” for the U.S. Government, meant “the assurance given to a new state that it will be permitted to hold its rank and place, in the character of an independent political organism, in the society of nations” (Robertson 1918, 239). The first occasion when the U.S. Government recognized a new state was in 1792 when Secretary Thomas Jefferson instructed Gouverneur Morris, the American minister to France, to deal with the French Republic, as that “government rested upon the will of the nation” (cited in Robertson 1918, 239). When changes took place in the French government, the U.S. furnished Morris with fresh credentials and thereby accorded recognition to the new French governments. The exact procedure to be followed in recognition of a new state was first seriously considered by the U.S. Government in connection with the protracted revolution against Spanish rule in America.

1  G eorge Washington’s Farewell Address, September 17, 1796, http://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu​ /18th ​_ century​/washing​.asp.

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Between 1808 and 1826, all of South America except the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico slipped out of the hands of the Iberian powers, which had ruled the region since the conquest. The speed and timing of that dramatic change were the result of a combination of long-building tensions in colonial rule and a series of external events. The reforms imposed by the Spanish Bourbons in the eighteenth century provoked great instability in the relations between the rulers at home (Spain) and their colonial subjects in the Americas. Many “Creoles” (those of Spanish parentage but who were born in America) felt the Bourbon policy to be an unfair attack on their wealth, political power, and social status. Actually, the gradual loosening of trade restrictions benefited some Creoles in Venezuela and other areas that had moved from the periphery to the center during the late colonial era. Nevertheless, those profits merely whetted those Creoles’ appetites for greater free trade than the Bourbons were willing to grant. Creoles reacted angrily against the crown’s preference for peninsulares in administrative positions and its declining support of the caste system and the Creoles’ privileged status within it. After hundreds of years of proven service to Spain, the American-born elites felt that the Bourbons were now treating them like a recently conquered nation. But it was European diplomatic and military events that provided the catalyst, turning Creole discontent into full-fledged movements for South American independence: first, the efforts of Napoleon in the peninsula and then the emergence of the Holy Alliance. The French Connection

When the Spanish crown entered into an alliance with France in 1795, it set off a series of developments that opened up economic and political distance between the Iberian countries and their American colonies. By siding with France, Spain pitted itself against Britain, the dominant sea power of the period, which used its naval forces to reduce and eventually cut communications between Spain and the Americas. Unable to preserve any sort of monopoly on trade, the Spanish crown was forced to loosen the restrictions on its colonies’ commerce. Spanish Americans now found themselves able to trade legally with other colonies, as well as with any third countries, such as the United States. Spain’s wartime liberalization of colonial trade sharpened Creoles’ desires for greater economic self-determination. More immediately, it was the policy that Napoleon adopted toward Spain in 1808; especially the deposition of King Ferdinand VII and the announcement that Joseph Bonaparte was King of Spain and the Indies. In 1807, the Spanish King, Charles IV, granted passage through Spanish territory to Napoleon’s forces on their way to invade Portugal. The immediate effect of that concession was to send the Portuguese ruler, Prince Regent John, to Brazil. Arriving in Rio de Janeiro with some 15,000 officials, nobles, and

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other members of his court, the Prince Regent transformed the Brazilian colony into the administrative center of his empire. At the same time, Charles abdicated in favor of his son, Ferdinand, with the result that Napoleon had them both imprisoned. The result was the formation of local authorities in several South American cities, which governed on behalf of the captive monarch, namely Ferdinand VII. Between 1808 and 1810, “juntas” (local governments) emerged in South America to rule in the name of Ferdinand VII. In Mexico City and Montevideo caretaker governments were the work of loyal peninsular Spaniards eager to head off Creole threats. In Santiago, Caracas, Bogota, and other cities, by contrast, it was Creoles who controlled the provisional juntas. Not all of these governments lasted very long, as loyalist troops quickly put down Creole-dominated juntas in La Paz and Quito. By 1810, however, the trend was clear. Without denouncing Ferdinand, Creoles throughout most of the region were moving toward the establishment of their own autonomous governments. The series of revolutions, which culminated in the separation of the Spanish colonies from the motherland, began in 1810. That year, a Cortes (Parliament) emerged in Cádiz to represent both Spain and Spanish America. Two years later, it produced a new, liberal constitution that proclaimed Spain’s American possessions to be full members of the kingdom and not mere colonies. However, the Creoles who participated in the new Cortes were denied equal representation. Moreover, the Cortes would not concede permanent free trade to the South Americans and obstinately refused to grant any degree of meaningful autonomy to the overseas dominions. Creoles’ hopes were further dashed in 1814 with the Restoration of King Ferdinand to the throne and, with it, the energetic attempt to reestablish Spanish imperial power in the Americas. Rejecting compromise and reform, Ferdinand resorted to military force to bring wayward Spanish–American regions back into the empire as colonies. The Role of the Holy Alliance

At the behest of Tsar Alexander I, the monarchist great powers of Russia, Austria, and Prussia signed the Treaty of Holy Alliance in Paris on September 26, 1815. The alliance was a conservative measure to promote the divine right of kings and Christian values in European political affairs in the face of the threat of liberalism, secularism, and revolution. Among other things, the Treaty of Holy Alliance gave not only Spain the right to involve in South American affairs, put down the local revolts, and prevent the independence of the Spanish colonies but also the members of the Holy Alliance the right to assist Spain in attaining these goals. (Having originally decided to work with Russia, Austria, and Prussia, primarily as a means to control their decisions and actions, after 1822,

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Britain would break ranks with the Holy Alliance and advocate a policy of non-intervention of European powers in South American affairs. In fact, Britain resolved to prevent Spain from restoring its empire in the Americas because trade with South America was important to British commercial interests.) As long as the Holy Alliance confined its activities to Europe, it aroused no anxiety in the United States. However, when the members of the Holy Alliance started to discuss South American affairs in a series of meetings at Aix-La-Chapelle in 1818, Troppau and Ljubljana in 1820, and Verona in 1822, the situation changed, and Washington began to become engaged (Schmieder 2015). The First Response to the South American Revolutions: Caution and Neutrality

In the early years of the South American revolutions, the cities of Caracas and Buenos Aires sent agents to Washington to solicit aid and to make known the significant events which were taking place in Spanish America. Other provisional governments addressed communications to Washington or commissioned agents to plead their cause in the United States. There was no possibility, however, that the U.S. Government would receive such emissaries officially at a time when the provisional governments in Spanish America had not formally declared themselves independent of Spain. The earliest formal declaration of independence from Spain was adopted by delegates from the provinces of the Captaincy General of Venezuela on July 5, 1810; an example which was soon followed by other territories in South America. The first agent to represent in the U.S. a Hispanic–American nation that had declared its independence, namely the “United Provinces of Venezuela,” was Telesforo de Orea, who, in April 1810, had been sent to Washington by the province of Caracas. The instructions to Orea directed him to inform the U.S. Government about the “Declaration of Independence by the United Provinces of Venezuela” and to solicit the recognition of the new state (Paxson 1903, 117). On November 6, 1811, Orea accordingly addressed a note to Secretary of State, James Monroe, accompanied by a copy of Venezuela’s “Declaration of Independence.” On that note, Orea expressed the hope that the U.S. Government would acknowledge the “new confederation as a free and independent nation” (Paxton 1903, 119). This action had a significant impact on the U.S. attitude toward Spanish America. In President Madison’s message to Congress of November 5, 1811, he stated that an enlarged philanthropy and an enlightened forecast imposed upon the government an obligation to take a deep interest in their destinies, to cherish reciprocal sentiments of good will, to regard the progress of events,

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and not to be unprepared for whatever order of things may be ultimately established (cited in Robertson 1918, 242). That part of Madison’s message, together with the Venezuelan “Declaration of Independence,” was referred to a special Congress committee. On December 10, 1811, this committee issued a resolution, not immediately acted upon. According to this resolution, the Congress beheld “with friendly interest, the establishment of independent sovereignties by the Spanish provinces in America” that the U.S. felt that those provinces had attained “the condition of nations, by the just exercise of their rights” and that the Senate and the House would join with the president “in establishing with them, as sovereign and independent States, such amicable relations and commercial intercourse as may require their legislative authority” (cited in Robertson 1918, 242). When he informed Orea of these friendly sentiments, Secretary Monroe said that the U.S. ministers at European courts had been “made acquainted with the sentiments of their government, and instructed to keep them in view, in their communications, with the courts,” where they respectively resided. Meanwhile, Monroe had already instructed Joel Barlow, the U.S. minister to France, that American ministers in Europe were to avail themselves of “suitable opportunities to promote the acknowledgment of Venezuela’s independence by other powers” (cited in Robertson 1918, 243). It appears that Monroe wished to make certain that Venezuela’s independence was firmly established before he became the advocate of immediate recognition by the United States. In May 1812, he pointed out that if a counter-revolution took place in Venezuela after his government had acknowledged the country’s independence, “the United States would sustain an injury without having rendered any advantage” to the Venezuelan people (cited in Robertson 1918, 243). Monroe’s cautious policy was soon justified, for in July 1812, the Venezuelan revolutionary commander, Francisco de Miranda, capitulated to the royalist commander, Domingo Monteverde. Consequently, Venezuela fell again under the sway of Spain, and the movement to establish independence in northern South America was checked. In accordance with the policy initiated by President Washington, on September 1, 1815, President Madison issued a proclamation of neutrality which warned all U.S. citizens to refrain from enlisting in any military expedition against the Spanish dominions. On the other hand, at about the same time, by orders of the secretary of the treasury, vessels from the insurgent Spanish colonies were freely admitted into U.S. ports, regardless of the flag flying (cited in Robertson 1918, 240).

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The Question of Recognition of the South American States

At that time, the American judiciary was not perfectly consistent in its views concerning the proper authority to acknowledge the independence of a new state. In the piracy case of the United States v. Hutchings, which involved the question as to whether or not the revolted provinces of la Plata were independent in 1816, Chief Justice Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court gave the opinion that before a nation “could be considered independent by the judiciary of foreign nations, it was necessary that its independence should be recognized by the executive authority of those nations” (cited in Robertson 1918, 240). In a special message to Congress on December 26, 1816, President Monroe proposed that the neutrality laws should be modified (Cresson 1969, 77). On January 14, 1817, the House Committee on Foreign Relations issued a bill that contained more stringent provisions than the existing law in regard to violations of neutrality. On March 3, this bill entitled “An act more effectually to preserve the neutral relations of the United States,” became U.S. law (Robertson 1918, 244). On April 20, 1818, that law was superseded by another act that prevented every U.S. citizen from accepting or exercising any commission within the limits of that country to serve any “foreign prince, state, colony, district, or people” against another nation with which the United States was at peace. “This act also prevented every U.S. citizen neither to enlist in the military service of a foreign state or colony nor to equip any ship or privateer to cruise against a foreign nation” (cited in Robertson 1918, 244). These measures were evidently intended to prevent U.S. citizens who sympathized with the Spanish–American revolutionaries from committing any unneutral acts against Spain. At the same time, throughout all the fluctuations of the revolutions in Spanish America, the U.S. Government sent commercial agents to La Guairá and Buenos Aires. Those agents were instructed to watch the interests of American seamen and to make reports concerning the political condition of South America. At a later date, the U.S. Government sent commissioners, or special agents, to various parts of Spanish America who were expected to study conditions in the revolted colonies (Paxton 1903, 123). Thus, during the early stages of the protracted struggle for the emancipation of the American colonists from Spanish rule, the U.S. policy was to investigate conditions in the revolted colonies, to maintain her neutrality in the war between Spain and the revolutionists and to watch any developments which might enable her to take steps favorable to the nascent states. The changing status of Spanish America was brought forcibly before the U.S. Government through the declaration of independence from Spain by the “United Provinces of South America,” which was adopted at Tucumlan on July 9, 1816. On September 26, 1816, the “United Provinces of South

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America” decided to send an agent to the United States to solicit the acknowledgment of their independence (Paxton 1903, 124). In March 1817, Supreme Director Juan Martin de Pueyrredon appointed Manuel Hermnenejildo de Aguirre as the agent of the “United Provinces of South America” to the United States. At the same time, Bernardo O’Higgins, who had just become supreme director of Chile, authorized Aguirre to secure frigates to be used in the struggle for the liberation of South America. With letters from O’Higgins, Pueyrredon, and San Martin addressed to President Monroe, upon his arrival in Washington, Aguirre pleaded with Secretary Adams for the recognition of the United Provinces of la Plata as an independent nation (Paxton 1903, 125). These developments stimulated President Monroe at the end of October 1817, to lay before his cabinet the following four questions (Robertson 1918, 247). First, has the executive power to acknowledge the independence of new States whose independence has not been acknowledged by the parent country, and between which parties a war actually exist on that account? Second, will the sending or receiving of a minister to a new State under such circumstances be considered an acknowledgment of its independence? Third, is such acknowledgment a justifiable cause of war to the parent country? Is it a just cause of complaint to any other power? And finally, is it expedient for the United States, at this time, to acknowledge the independence of Buenos Aires or of any other part of the Spanish dominions in America now in a state of revolt? (Robertson 1918, 247). The members of President Monroe’s cabinet were reluctant to address these significant questions. Secretary of State Adams maintained that it was not yet expedient for the president to acknowledge the independence of the United Provinces of la Plata. On later occasions, partly for reasons of policy, Adams sometimes induced Monroe to assume a conservative attitude toward the new states of Spanish America (Bemis 1969). Probably the clearest statement of the cardinal principles upon which he thought the U.S. Government should act was made by Adams in a letter to President Monroe dated August 24, 1818, when considering the recognition of the United Provinces of la Plata: But there is a stage in such contests when the parties struggling for independence have, as I conceive, a right to demand its acknowledgment by neutral parties, and when the acknowledgment may be granted without departure from the obligations of neutrality. It is the stage when independence is established as a matter of fact so as to leave the chance of the opposite party to recover their dominion utterly desperate. The neutral nation must, of course, judge for itself when this period has arrived; and as the belligerent nation has the same right to judge for itself, it is very likely to judge differently from the neutral and to make it a cause or pretext for

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war. If war thus results in point of fact from the measure of recognizing a contested independence, the moral right or wrong of the war depends upon the justice, and sincerity, and prudence with which the recognizing nation took the step. I am satisfied that the cause of the South Americans, so far as it consists in the assertion of independence against Spain, is just. But the justice of a cause, however it may enlist individual feelings in its favor, is not sufficient to justify third parties in siding with it. The fact and the right combined can alone authorize a neutral to acknowledge a new and disputed sovereignty. The neutral may, indeed, infer the right from the fact, but not the fact from the right. If Buenos Ayres confined its demand of recognition to the provinces of which it is in actual possession, and if it would assert its entire independence by agreeing to place the United States upon the footing of the most favored nation I should think the time now arrived when its Government might be recognized without a breach of neutrality. (cited in Robertson 1918, 247) In 1818, the question regarding the proper authority to recognize a new state was involved in the case of the United States v. Palmer. Upon that occasion, Chief Justice Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court said that such questions belonged “more properly to those who declare what that law shall be; who can place the nation in such a position with respect to foreign nations as to their own judgment shall appear wise; to whom are entrusted all its foreign relations” (cited in Robertson 1918, 240). In the same year that the Chileans proclaimed their independence of Spain, it was evidently the opinion of Chief Justice Marshall that “the power to acknowledge the independence of a new state was vested in the legislative and executive departments of the government of the United States” (cited in Robertson 1918, 240). On January 1, 1819, Secretary of State Adams prepared new instructions for the American minister at London in which he stated that the United States was contemplating the recognition of the United Provinces of la Plata “at no remote period” (Paxton 1903, 158). Secretary Crawford took the view that such recognition should be made by sending a minister to South America; for the Senate would have to act upon the nomination and thus sanction the measure. Secretary Wirt added that the House of Representatives would also have to concur by providing an appropriation therefor. While President Monroe declared that, as those bodies had the power of impeachment, “it would be quite convenient to have them thus pledged beforehand.” But Adams took a different view. He thought that it was not consistent with national dignity “to be the first in sending a minister to a new power. If an exchange of ministers was to take place, the first should come” from Spanish America. Adams declared that instead “of admitting the Senate or House of Representatives to any share in the act of recognition,” he

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“would expressly void that form of doing it which would require the concurrence of those bodies. It was, I had no doubt, by our Constitution, an act of the Executive authority” (Paxton 1903, 159). Adams argued that “the Executive ought carefully to preserve entire the authority given him by the Constitution, and not weaken it by setting the precedent of making either House of Congress a party to an act which it was his exclusive right and duty to perform” (Paxton 1903, 159). With regard to the U.S. foreign policy, Congressman Henry Clay declared that as soon as “stability and order” were maintained in a new nation, the United States “ought to consider the actual as the true Government” (cited in Robertson 1918, 248). He argued that the “United Provinces of la Plata” had established a firm government. “Not a Spanish bayonet remained within the former viceroyalty of la Plata to contest the authority of the actual government,” Clay declared (cited in Robertson 1918, 249). However, Clay’s arguments did not convince Congress that the time had arrived to acknowledge the independence of the “United Provinces of la Plata,” but it incited a debate concerning the respective parts which the executive and legislative departments of the government should respectively take in recognition of colonies that had separated from Spain. Early in 1819, the U.S. Government realized that a change in its policy toward Spanish America could scarcely take place while it was negotiating with the Spanish government for the cession of the Floridas. Actually, Adams feared that U.S. intervention might cause Spain to abrogate the 1819 agreement on Florida, which had yet to be ratified and even bring the two countries to war. Maintaining that the rebels had not yet established de facto government, he was concerned that Europe might react unfavorably. Although London at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818 had opposed economic sanctions against South America, Britain, along with Russia and France, disapproved of recognition by the United States. Moreover, during those negotiations, Spain suggested that an article should be inserted in the projected treaty stipulating that the United States would not acknowledge the independence of Spain’s revolted colonies. Adams refused to give such a pledge. As a compromise, Adams proposed a policy of non-colonization, an attack on the legitimacy of colonial establishments in the New World which would please South America and Henry Clay. Adams accepted cooperation with South America, not against the principles of the Holy Alliance, as Clay had suggested, but against European expansion in the New World (Pappas 1985, 47). In April 1820, the Spanish envoy at Washington attempted in vain to secure from Adams as a condition of ratification by the Spanish government a pledge that the United States would “form no relations with the pretended governments of the revolted provinces of Spain situate beyond sea,” and that it would “conform to the course of proceeding adopted, in this respect, by other

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Powers in amity with Spain” (cited in Robertson 1918, 250). Not until after the revolution of 1820—when Spain became a limited monarchy under the constitution of 1812 did Ferdinand VII, in October 1820, ratify the Florida treaty. The ratifications of that treaty were exchanged on February 22, 1821. From Neutrality to Recognition

Meanwhile, in 1820 troops waiting in Cádiz to be sent as part of the crown’s military campaigns to suppress revolution in Spain’s colonies revolted, forcing Ferdinand to agree to a series of liberal measures. That concession divided and weakened loyalist opposition to independence in the Americas. In 1821, revolts broke out in the South American colonies, leading in a year to independence from Spain, largely at the behest of British policy. Britain had the greatest interest in the destruction of Spain’s commercial monopoly, and secondly, British policy toward the insurgent colonies was mainly determined by its general war policy. Britain and the insurgent colonists had the same enemy: Napoleon’s elder brother, Joseph Bonaparte, who had become King of Spain with French assistance. Napoleon’s conquest of Spain in 1808 provided the signal for South Americans to rise in revolt. By 1822 and as a result of revolutionary movements led by Simon Bolivar, Francisco Miranda, Jose de San Martin, and Miguel Hidalgo, all of Hispanic America—from Argentina and Chile in the south to Mexico and California in the north— had won independence from Spain. On February 10, 1821, the question of the recognition of the South American states was again raised in connection with Clay’s resolution that the House would give its constitutional support to the president whenever he may deem it expedient to recognize the sovereignty and independence of any of the said provinces. Various opinions were expressed in regard to the constitutionality and the expediency of that measure. Ultimately Clay’s resolution was carried out, and a committee was appointed to lay the matter before the president. Monroe considered this action as an endorsement of the policy which had been followed by the administration. The people of the United States took a deep interest in what seemed a repetition of their own experience in breaking away from European rule. The South American independence movements confirmed their own belief in self-government. In 1822 President James Monroe, under powerful public pressure, received authority to recognize the new countries of Latin America—including the former Portuguese colony of Brazil—and soon exchanged ministers with them. This recognition confirmed their status as genuinely independent countries, entirely separated from their former European connections. Early in 1822, partly because of the achievements of the Spanish–American revolutionaries, and partly because of the ratification of the Florida Treaty,

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Monroe and Adams felt that conditions were ripe for the acknowledgment of Spanish–American independence. On March 8, 1822, Monroe declared that the newly independent nations were “in full enjoyment of their independence” and that there was “not the most remote prospect of their being deprived of it” and that the new governments had now a claim to recognition by other Powers, which ought not to be resisted. When we regard, then, the great length of time which this war has been prosecuted, the complete success which has attended it in favor of the provinces, the present condition of the parties, and the utter inability of Spain to produce any change in it, we are compelled to conclude that its fate is settled and that the provinces which have declared their independence, and are in the enjoyment of it, ought to be recognized. (cited in Robertson 1918, 253) Monroe affirmed that the delay of the United States in recognition had furnished “an unequivocal proof to Spain, as well as to other powers, of the high respect entertained by the U.S. for her rights” (cited in Robertson 1918, 253). He reasoned that the spread of the revolution over Spanish America would reconcile Spain to a separation from her colonies. He noted that the United States wished to act in concert with the nations of Europe in regard to the acknowledgment of Spanish–American independence. He declared that it was not his government’s intention to alter the friendly relations existing between the United States and the belligerent countries but to observe “the most perfect neutrality between them” (cited in Robertson 1918, 253). In November 1823, the U.S. Government held a series of meetings to discuss British Foreign Secretary George Canning’s proposal that the United States and Britain issue a joint declaration in support of South America’s independence from the Holy Alliance (Temperley 1925, 110). Canning, who had refused to recognize South American independence from Spain, had told Rush that he had heard that the Holy Alliance would meet to discuss the affairs of South America as soon as the French had suppressed Spain’s liberal rebellion (Temperley 1925, 110). In July 1823, Prince Metternich told the British as well as the Russians and Spanish that he did not believe the reconquest of South America to be possible (Pappas 1985, 57). However, on November 17, 1823, Baron von Tuyll, Russia’s minister to the United States, told Adams that the Tsar would support Spain’s supremacy in South America and would guarantee “peace in the civilized world” (Pappas 1985, 57). Before presenting Canning’s proposal to the cabinet, Monroe asked for the advice of former presidents Jefferson and Madison. Both enthusiastically endorsed cooperation with Britain, and Madison added that the two powers

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should jointly declare their opposition to the French intervention in Spain (Pappas 1985, 58). During November 1823, Monroe and Adams formulated the Monroe Doctrine, which proclaimed a policy of isolation from European affairs and of neutrality in regard to South America’s struggle with Spain. But it asserted that the United States would oppose the transfer of Europe’s political system to America and the establishment of any new European colonies on the American continent. It also stated that the United States did not intend to interfere with the existing New World colonies of any European nation, but interference by any European power with New World governments which had declared and maintained their independence and been recognized by the United States would be viewed as unfriendly. Adams was quite certain that he could rely on British support. In the U.S. cabinet meetings, he skillfully maneuvered Monroe and the members of the cabinet into accepting his views. In truth, it seems there was little danger to South America’s freedom from the Holy Alliance. Russia had not come to a decision on South America, Metternich did not believe in the possibility of its reconquest, and France had other interests. When France promised Canning, through the Polignac Memorandum of October 9, 1823, not to intervene in South America for Spain and the Holy Alliance, the threat vanished. But Canning did not inform Rush of this until November 24, 1823, only eight days before Monroe delivered his famous message to Congress (Monroe 1823). Meanwhile, London urged the extension of Anglo-American guarantees to South America, but Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, convinced Monroe to act unilaterally: “It would be more candid, as well as more dignified, to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France, than to come in as a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war” (cited in Robertson 1918, 254). In December 1823, with the knowledge that the British navy would defend Latin America from the Holy Alliance and France, President Monroe took the occasion of his annual message to Congress to pronounce what would become known as the Monroe Doctrine—the refusal to tolerate any further extension of European domination in the Americas: The American continents … are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers … We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their [political] system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety … With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have … acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their

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destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States. (cited in Robertson 1918, 255) The second circumstance which aided the colonists was that Spain was waging an unsuccessful war in the Iberian Peninsula, and it was not in a position to send troops against the insurgents (Fuerte 1923, 30). Political considerations, however, prevented Britain for a considerable time from favoring the insurgents. But the Monroe Doctrine had an immediate effect on British policy. The protective interest shown in the South American republics by the United States, forced Canning, the British Foreign Secretary, to recognize them in 1825 to avoid their succumbing completely to North American influence (Wood 1991, 63). The Greek Revolution and Neutrality

Tested by the War of 1812, the economic panics of 1807 and 1817, and upholding President Washington’s recommendation for neutrality, U.S. leaders faced the Greek revolution (also known as the War of Independence), ongoing for the decade of the 1820s, whose leaders also appealed for American support. Popular support to defend the Greek people spoke to America’s ideologies of Classical Liberalism, Classical Republicanism, and Christian Brotherhood. Nevertheless, the U.S. Government ultimately refrained from joining the conflict either militarily or politically and maintained neutrality, although it was at the same time engaged economically and commercially with the Ottoman Empire. Scholars have put forward three explanations for the retreat into neutrality. One perspective focuses on political and diplomatic reasoning (Earle 1927; Repousis 1999). A second perspective is associated with the Monrovian and Anti-Federalist schools of thought. A third perspective stresses economic factors. Since the country’s early economy was strained, its leaders felt pressure to compromise revolutionary values for financial prosperity, peace, and stability. Scholarly Perspectives on the U.S. Response to the Greek Revolution

The Monrovian view draws upon diplomatic commitments and political ties for its justification. 2 John Quincy Adams was a former Federalist and still had many connections to the remaining Federalists in U.S. politics. Federalists

2  Monrovian is the historical perspective that reasons the United States stayed out of the Greek War for Independence because of the Monroe Doctrine’s commitment to staying out of European affairs. This view draws upon diplomatic commitments and political ties for its justification.

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at this time had earned a bad reputation from the War of 1812 with their secession attempt and their subtle aid to the invading British.3 Lawrence Kaplan (1993) explains that becoming involved in the conflict would have been a bad move for the United States and John Adams politically. If the British were to become involved in Greece, and Americans were fighting right alongside them, it would imply that Adams was a Federalist and that he was willing to forget the War of 1812. In the eyes of Adams and many Americans, jumping into a foreign conflict on the side of an enemy you just finished a war with was a political suicide and also had a “bitter taste of treason” (Kaplan 1993, 3–4). Using his influence on Monroe and his position in the government, Adams steered the country away from the conflict and ensured his viability in the next election. Angelos Repousis (1999) builds off of Kaplan’s work but argues that despite the reluctance to commit the United States to a European conflict, there was a real urge to be involved in some way. In fact, James Monroe approached Congress, and the public at large, pleading for non-intervention with the military but also encouraging relief efforts to be made and supplies to be sent to the Greeks (Repousis 1999, 338–339). Furthermore, Repousis argues that Adams feared getting involved in a foreign conflict for reasons unrelated to Europe and involving Egypt and other African states (Repousis 1999, 339). Specifically, businessmen, particularly Boston merchants, were nervous about the repercussions of a war with the Ottoman Empire on their companies; they were even nervous about non-combative assistance to the Greeks (Repousis 1999, 340). The risk of upsetting the Ottoman Empire raised the concern that trade in the Mediterranean Sea could be diminished, and Muslim pirates and the Barbary States would become emboldened and be far more active in attacking American vessels since they were allied with the Ottoman Empire. Repousis takes a position that rests upon mostly political reasoning and a certain degree of economic protection. A more recent third school of thought takes a more radical position. It insists that economics and commerce were the primary American motivation for non-political and non-military involvement in the Greek–Ottoman conflict while maintaining economic and commercial ties with the Ottoman Empire. Specifically, Michael Chapman (2013) argues that Adams feared that the Greek–Ottoman conflict would lead to a war not only with the Ottoman Empire but also with the Barbary States. Facing a war with these

3  Federalists saw the War of 1812 as a costly, futile, and partisan venture that was likely to produce little good and much evil. The best way to bring the conflict to an end, most Federalists agreed, was to oppose it. Hence they wrote, spoke, and preached against the war; they discouraged enlistments in the army and subscriptions to the war loans. The Federalists vigorously condemned all who supported the war and worked for their defeat at the polls.

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two sides would have brought economic hardship and would have prevented the United States from having any access to Mediterranean trade. Chapman not only suggests that merchants were nervous about the economic repercussions of the United States opposing Ottoman policy, but also argues that these merchants utilized their financial resources to influence politicians and protect their ability to travel the seas. He further argues that the political reasons for U.S. neutrality were cosmetic and that even the supporters of Greek independence ended up being convinced by the merchants’ argument. Shining a light upon the business practices and dealings of prominent merchants such as Thomas H. Perkins and Israel Thorndike, Jared Jacovene (2017) goes further and demonstrates how these individuals built political networks, controlled the financial and political fates of entire states, and expanded their business empires to halfway across the world. Thus, it was not truly in the interest of the nation that the U.S. Government stayed away from Greece and declared a foreign policy of neutrality through the Monroe Doctrine. These actions, rather, benefited the financial elites that dominated the New English shipping economy as well as those Americans involved in the Chinese Opium Trade. The Political and Diplomatic Dimension of the U.S. Response to the Greek Revolution

The Greek revolution broke out on March 25, 1821, following which, in the fall of 1821, Russia proposed to the U.S. Government joint action in support of the Greeks. Russia had broken diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire in August 1821, and Tsar Alexander I, who under the influence of a strong pro-Greek party, was seriously contemplating war against the Ottomans and sought allies. The Russian Court told the U.S. minister, Henry Middleton, that it desired the American navy’s help in the Mediterranean should Russia declare war against the Ottomans (Adams 1874, V 430). To this end, the Russians proposed a commercial treaty, which Monroe was ready to negotiate. However, Secretary of State, John Adams, felt that the United States could obtain nothing of importance by such a treaty except a political alliance with the Tsar. Since President Monroe did not want to become involved in “any political entanglements with Russia,” following a cabinet discussion on November 29, 1821, declined Russia’s offer (Adams 1874, 430). Nevertheless, the U.S. Government displayed sympathy with the Greek cause. In the summer of 1822, the U.S. sent into Greek waters a naval squadron composed of a frigate, a corvette, and a schooner. In his annual message to the U.S. Congress of December 2, 1822, Monroe enthusiastically endorsed the Greek cause. “A strong hope is entertained,” Monroe stated “that these people will receive their independence and resume their equal

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station among the nations of the earth” (cited in Pappas 1985, 49). Citing both the Ancient World and a shared interest in liberalism, Monroe made it clear that the United States hoped that the Greek revolution would succeed (Robinson 1948, 67). Local and state governments applauded this sympathy from the president and, through the passage of state resolutions, expressed their own sympathy for the conflict and even urged immediate recognition of Greek independence (Robinson 1948, 73; Dwight 1824). South Carolina, Maryland, Kentucky, New York, and several other state legislatures passed legislation and resolutions that expressed the same sympathies, each drawing upon the Ancient World, Classical Liberalism, and Christianity (Richard 1994, 2009). Monroe would have been even more pro-Greek but for the influence of Adams and the Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford. The preliminary draft contained a strong denunciation of Ottoman despotism and oppression which Crawford said would offend the Ottomans. The speech contained a strong outpouring of pro-Greek sentiment, but also, Adams noted with satisfaction in his diary, a judicious statement that the Unites States would not interfere on their behalf (cited in Pappas 1985, 49). The Greeks Seek U.S. Recognition

In 1822, Greek president Alexander Mavrokordatos sent Andreas Louriottis as an agent to the West to obtain a loan and other support, including recognition. General Henry A. Dearborn, U.S. minister to Portugal, received Louriottis warmly and sympathetically and advised him to seek U.S. recognition and aid through Richard Rush, U.S. minister to Britain. Louriottis arrived in London in February 1823 and immediately called on Rush. Citing President Monroe’s remarks on Greece in his annual message, Rush assured Louriottis of his country’s friendly disposition. When Louriottis asked about U.S. willingness to establish diplomatic relations, Rush pleaded ignorance. He did, however, assure the Greek envoy of America’s desire to see the Greek cause triumph and pointed to the U.S. recognition of the South American republics “as a sure indication it could feel no backwardness in welcoming, when the proper day arrived, the newborn freedom of Greece, into the family of nations” (cited in Pappas 1985, 50). In a letter to Adams, dated February 20, 2023, Louriottis formally requested U.S. recognition of Greek independence. He argued that the Greeks had liberated “a considerable part of their homeland” and had organized a government “based on popular suffrage and on organic law similar to the Constitution of the United States” (Horton 1976, 37) “The government of Greece wished to establish diplomatic relations with the government of the United States,” Louriottis said, and “would be very pleased to enter upon discussions of the matter” (cited in Pappas 1985, 50). A June 23, 1823, letter to Adams from

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Greek Secretary of State Alexander Mavrokordatos expressing Greek interest in recognition would confirm the Greek request. On June 11, 1823, President Monroe asked former president Thomas Jefferson whether he should take a bolder attitude toward the Greek cause. Jefferson counseled him to be bold with expressions of sympathy for insurgents or of indignation against oppressors of liberty but to adhere to neutrality and isolation from European affairs (cited in Pappas 1985, 51). On August 15, 1823, Monroe’s cabinet discussed Louriottis’ note. Calhoun, viewing war with the Holy Alliance as inevitable, wanted the United States to build up its military and become the bastion of freedom throughout the world.4 John Adams alone opposed this pro-Greek approach and told the president privately that he did not think “quite so lightly of a war with Turkey” which would renew the conflict with the Barbary States (Adams 1874, VI 172). Unable to come to a decision on the Louriottis note, the cabinet authorized Adams to draft a response. On August 16, 1823, John Adams obtained the president’s approval of his reply. It said that many Americans were “cheering with their best wishes the cause of the Greeks,” but they were “forbidden, by the duties of their situation, from taking part in the war to which their relation” was “that of neutrality.” The United States did not want to become involved in war, Adams (1874, VI 175) asserted, but if, in the future, the Greeks should … establish and organize themselves as an independent nation, the United States will be among the first … to establish diplomatic and commercial relations with them … and to recognize, with special satisfaction, their constituent state in the character of a sister republic. Adams enclosed a note of instructions for Richard Rush, asking him to deliver the letter in person, should Louriottis be in London, and to explain that the U.S. Government “had been governed, not by its inclinations, or a sentiment of indifference to the cause, but, by its constitutional duties, clear and unequivocal” (Adams 1874, VI 175). For the United States to come to the military or financial assistance of the Greeks, Adams explained, would place them in a state of war with the Ottoman Empire, “and perhaps with all the Barbary Powers.” It is not within the power of the president, Adams added, to offer such assistance to anyone except “by an act of Congress, which would assuredly not be adopted, should it even be recommended by the Executive” (Adams 1874, VI 175). “This country’s policy,” wrote Adams,

4  Calhoun and Crawford would be Adams’ rivals for the presidency in 1824, and, in his diary, Adams accused them of being Greek enthusiasts only because of the popularity of the Greek cause.

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had been one of peace with all nations, and, for this reason, we had not helped even our old ally France when it appeared that she was fighting for the cause of the United States as well as her own … With regard to the recognition of sovereign states, … the United States have recognized the fact of foreign sovereignty, only when it was undisputed, or disputed without any rational prospects for success. In this manner, the successive changes of government in many of the European States, and the revolutionary governments of South America, have been acknowledged. The condition of the Greeks is not yet such as will admit of the recognition upon these principles. (Adams 1874, VI 175) Louriottis accepted without protest Adams’ rejection of aid and recognition. He assured Adams that Greece would continue the war and expressed hope that Greece would soon be able to rely on the assistance of the U.S. Government. The Greeks “would already have dispatched an envoy of some kind” to the U.S., he said, “had not the fear of jealousy or of giving a pretext for jealousy to other governments, induced them to defer this step” (cited in Pappas 1985, 53). The Greeks were at this time apprehensive and careful of their dealings because Tsar Alexander’s proposal of January 1824 advocated only Greek autonomy and not independence. Therefore, the Greeks did not want to arouse Russia’s indignation by openly seeking the support of any other country. Against Adams, President Monroe wanted to recognize Greek independence. In preparation for the cabinet meeting of November 21, 1823, Monroe asked the advice of former presidents Jefferson and Madison regarding the U.S. position toward the Greeks. Both had been supporting the Greek cause and thus enthusiastically endorsed cooperation with Britain and added that the two powers should jointly declare for Greek freedom (Pappas 1985, 58). During the cabinet meeting, Monroe read a draft of his forthcoming message to Congress in which he acknowledged Greek independence and recommended that Congress appropriate funds to send a minister to Greece. He declared himself eager to champion republican views, to condemn the Holy Alliance’s principle of intervention and to associate the U.S. with republicanism in Greece as well as in South America. In the cabinet, Calhoun, who believed that war with the conservative powers of Europe was imminent, agreed with him on everything. But Adams disagreed. He feared that such an announcement would alarm the nation because it sounded like a call to arms against the Holy Alliance for republicanism and would cause Spain, France, and Russia to break off diplomatic relations with the United States. No one else spoke on the subject except Samuel L. Southard, Secretary of the Navy, who “said little but inclined toward” Adams (Pappas 1985, 58).

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The following day, John Adams urged President Monroe “to abstain from everything in his message which the Holy Allies could make a pretext for construing into aggression upon them.” Adams wanted to make “earnest remonstrance against the interference of the European powers by force with South America,” he told President Monroe, “but to disclaim all interference on our part with Europe: to make an American cause, and adhere inflexibly to that” (Adams 1874, VI 177). He doubted, Adams said, “that if the President did not recommend the recognition of the independence of the Greeks it would be pressed in the House of Representatives” (Adams 1874, VI 177). Agreeing to accept Adams’ advice, President Monroe neither recognized actual Greek sovereignty nor implied any action on the part of the United States. He rather justified that Greece’s effort had already made it impossible for the Ottomans to regain full control of the country. He added that there were no other nations opposing Greek independence and, in fact, most European powers had already endorsed the movement and offered support; thus, it was not necessary for the United States to become involved. Adams remained apprehensive, but in his message to Congress on December 2, 1823, President Monroe said of the Greeks that “there is good cause to believe that their enemy has lost forever” control of them and “that Greece will become again an independent nation,” but stopped short of asking Congress to recognize its independence. The Monroe Doctrine was a high point in U.S.’ opposition to monarchy, colonization, and imperialism, but its effect on Greek independence was negative. Monroe was persuaded by Adams not to interfere in Europe, not even in Greece, in the hope of making non-intervention in South America more palatable to the conservative powers. Separating America from Europe would save the South American republics. He proclaimed that the cause of South America would become the cause of the United States in case of intervention by the Holy Allies, but he abandoned Greece. This did not, however, end hopes among the American philhellenes that the United States might still become the first nation to recognize Greece as it had South America and did not deter philhellenes from campaigning for Greek recognition in the halls of U.S. Congress. In December 1823 and January 1824, immediately following the declaration of the Monroe Doctrine, U.S. Congress began a spirited debate on recognizing Greek sovereignty and appointing a representative or commissioner to the newly formed Greek government (US Congress 1825). In the January convening, Charles Webster and Henry Clay, the Speaker of the House, each delivered passionate speeches that earned great praise and gave the movement a real shot of passing (Robinson 1948, 75; Webster 1824). When it came time to vote, however, with the resolution formally tabled, Webster and Clay quietly stepped aside and let the resolution die on the House Floor (Chapman

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2013, 451). The resolution had been subtly discouraged by Monroe, and the president’s position deeply resonated with members of Congress on both sides of the isle. As we shall see, there were also personal, political, and financial motivations behind Clay’s and Webster’s decision to abandon the resolution. Greece tried again: On July 20, 1824, Greek deputies at London asked Adams through Richard Rush if the United States would be willing to take Greece under its protection. In exchange, they offered favorable commercial relations and the gift of a Greek island to the United States. On October 25, 1824, they wrote to President Monroe that “soon, very soon, Greece will claim for all a recognition of herself as an independent state and we flatter ourselves that America will be one of the first to hail her as a sister Republic and to establish with her indissoluble bonds of amity and union” (cited in Pappas 1985, 54). They added that liberated Greece would want to conclude a commercial treaty with the United States. Adams discussed the request for U.S. protection with President Monroe after a November cabinet meeting. Adams was confident that Monroe would continue U.S. policy of nonengagement. On November 27, 1824, he sent President Monroe’s negative answer to the Greek deputies via Rush and wrote to Rush that “candour will require that they [the deputies] should not be led to expect any assistance from us incompatible with the duties of our neutrality” (Adams 1874, VI 177). In his December 1824 annual message to the U.S. Congress, President Monroe did not mention the subject. A final effort was made in early 1825. On March 10, the Greek government appointed Andreas Louriottis as a North American agent to represent Greece’s interests in Washington. But Louriottis was busy contracting a second loan to aid the revolution. In late August 1825, he wrote to the Greek government that important government business demanded his presence in London and that the London Greek Committee had decided against his going to Washington. There was no urgent need to send an agent to the United States, he said, for nothing important was expected to take place there because of U.S. European policy (Pappas 1985, 55). The Greek government, headed by Kountouriotes, was pro-British and apparently far more interested in gaining Britain’s support and recognition than that of the United States. Despite important American private encouragement (many important Americans wanted to help Greece), the Greeks made no further effort to send an agent to Washington. The Economic Dimension of the U.S. Response to the Greek Revolution

When the Greek revolution broke out, the United States had yet to establish diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire, which had not recognized the independence of the United States. In 1820, John Adams had commissioned

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Luther Bradish and Commodore William Bainbridge to explore the possibility of negotiating a commercial treaty with the Ottoman Empire (the Ottomans had granted the U.S. permission to trade at the port of Smyrna (Ismir) in 1811). The Greek revolution, however, caused the Sultan to take a less favorable attitude toward a commercial treaty with the United States (although the Sultan had signed a contract with American companies to build a number of vessels to be used by the Ottoman navy.) Despite the initial success of the Greek revolution, the U.S. Government was still exploring trade options with the Ottomans and was aiming to negotiate an eventual trade treaty. Whatever the true interest of the United States was, it was certainly not maintaining absolute neutrality and remaining distant from the conflict. For example, U.S. trade at Smyrna rose steadily after 1820. In 1823, U.S. exports to the Ottoman Empire, Levant, Egypt, Macha, and Aden amounted to $559,783 and imports to $703,761 (Cline 1930, 83). There was, at the very least, a deep economic concern about U.S. commerce with the Ottoman Empire, and it seems the U.S. wanted to protect as well as strengthen its current economic and commercial deals with the Ottoman Empire. The most profitable aspect of the trade was the purchase of Turkish opium for sale to the countries of southern and eastern Asia. This trade produced great profits for certain Boston merchants, who sought to prevent its interruption (Cline 1930, 84). In 1823, after receiving word that the Sublime Porte desired a treaty, Adams promptly appointed George B. English, a Harvard graduate and convert to Islam, as a secret agent to Sublime Porte (Pappas 1985, 56). On receiving his report, Adams commissioned Commodore John Rodgers to conclude a commercial treaty with the Sublime Porte but to take care not to offend the Greeks. Nevertheless, a number of issues prevented the signature of a commercial treaty between the United States and the Ottoman Empire (Rodgers 1825; Everett 1827). Evidence suggests that in addition to U.S.’ general commercial interests, prominent Americans with connections to politicians had questionable investments that might have incentivized them to strengthen relations with the Ottoman Empire and prevent the United States from involving in the Greek–Turkish conflict (Seaburg and Patterson 1971). A major player was Colonel Thomas H. Perkins, who was deeply invested in the Chinese Canton Trade, much of which he paid for in opium and purchased all of his opium from the Ottoman Empire and, by 1820, depended entirely upon the “good will” of the Ottomans to continue his business (Seaburg and Patterson 1971, 298–301). Thus, the entire wealth and operation of Perkins’ company depended upon foreign investments and his ability to access them. Colonel Perkins was a generous philanthropist who received much praise from the general public of Boston (Seaburg and Patterson 1971, 301). Aside

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from his political connections and financial influence over prominent individuals, there is also evidence that Perkins had a level of patronage and elitist connection to motivate and influence any person he hired or did business with. Between politics, business, and family connections, Perkins was connected to local and national politicians. It was with these incentives and various applications of pressure that Perkins established for himself, his friends, and his family a virtual oligarchy and a system of favors in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Seaburg and Patterson 1971, 123). Using this carefully crafted network of connections and financial pressure, Perkins protected his own business interests and gained the attention of national and local politicians to further protect and expand his investments. To Perkins, the freedom of traveling the seas was paramount to his business; any war, embargo, or diplomatic faux pas meant disaster or hard times for  Perkins’ overseas investments. Whether or not the war was for a just cause, Perkins viewed any and all disruption as detrimental to his business. Thus, Perkins favored not a peaceful economy but rather a “neutral” economy. Perkins wanted the United States out of foreign affairs and his own ships capable of reaching and trading with any port, for if there was a foreign war, he was willing to exploit it. In 1815, Perkins switched most of his business to the Opium Trade as it promised to double his profit and create a reliable market through the selling of Turkish opium to China. By 1821, the entirety of Perkin’s business rested upon the Opium Trade and the good will of the Ottomans, this being just before the beginning of the Greek revolution. In 1823, as the Greek revolution started to intensify and the American public began to show growing support for the Greek cause, Perkins began to realize how fragile his situation was. If the United States went to war with the Ottoman Empire or even just embargoed the Ottomans, then it would be an utter disaster for Perkins’ business and, even once the conflict had ended, Perkins might have to withdraw from Canton completely. Fortunately, Perkins had prepared for this situation and had learned from his misfortunes during the War of 1812 and the Embargo of 1807. Using his political network in Massachusetts, his business ties, and the influence he had over key politicians, Perkins was able to infiltrate the federal government with loyal surrogates and ultimately influence U.S. foreign policy, not just for the Greek conflict, but also for the rest of the nineteenth century (Seaburg and Patterson 1971, 298–301). It seems that there was some sort of understanding or agreement between Perkins and Adams to communicate on a regular basis. For instance, Perkins was opposed to the Greek revolution because it threatened his business and, coincidently, Adams proved to be one of the strongest opponents to the war, first as the Secretary of State and later as U.S. President (Chapman 2013, 451). Adams also advocated for a “Most Favored

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Nation” status with the Ottoman Empire; this agreement essentially secured Perkins’ assets indefinitely and made sure the Opium Trade could continue (Chapman 2013, 461). Adams, as it turned out, was financially tied to Perkins and his associates during the Greek revolution. In a letter from 1827, Adams thanked Perkins for his business advice and for getting him stocks in a factory with Israel Thorndike (Adams 1827). Furthermore, Perkins was initially an ardent support of Adams in his 1828 bid for the presidency. Using his political connections, funds, and the network he had in Massachusetts, Perkins was able to give Adams a running start (Seaburg and Patterson 1971, 351). The other figure that fell under Perkins’ influence was Edward Everett. Perkins and Everett were both members of the Boston Greek Committee and had an odd relationship of both opposing and somewhat supporting each other. Everett, after being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, was in a dire financial situation and asked Perkins for his financial support (Everett 1826). While aiding him, Perkins wrote anonymous letters to the local Boston newspaper counterpointing the articles published by Everett and the committee (Seaburg and Patterson 1971, 313). Everett and Perkins also shared a financial and professional relationship with several different projects (Seaburg and Patterson 1971, 313). Everett was obligated to Perkins because of his political prominence in the state, as well as the mixed financial support Everett needed, and Perkins could provide for the Greek revolution. Simultaneously, Perkins might have also used his influence with the wealthy Boston merchant community to prevent donations from reaching the Greek Committee of Boston. Perkins more than likely convinced his wealthy peers to withhold their donations to the Greek Committee of Boston or at least threatened Everett that he might do so. Thus, this put Everett in a position where he had to water-down his rhetoric on the cause so as to gather and send any funds to Greece. Daniel Webster also fell well within this sphere of influence due to his friendship with not only Perkins, but also with several of Perkins’ business associates. Israel Thorndike, one of the wealthiest people in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at the time, had conducted business several times with Perkins both in Canton and on local prospects (Forbes 1953). Thorndike was also one of Perkins’ oldest friends and had often invested in projects together for mutual benefit; some of the most noteworthy investments they shared were the (now) McLean Hospital, the Massachusetts Cape Cod Grand Canal, Nahant Hotel, and the Bunker Hill Monument. Interestingly, Webster was also a participant in the Bunker Hill Monument project and was a very friendly neighbor of Israel Thorndike (Seaburg and Patterson 1971, 319). Thus, when studying the U.S. stance in the Greek revolution, it is impossible to attribute U.S.’ decision to remain neutral to actual diplomatic

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considerations that were in the interest of the country. Rather, it is more likely that U.S. neutrality was caused by Perkins since the people who ended up creating the act of neutrality both knew Perkins for a large part of their lives and were obligated to Perkins’ interests out of friendship, political patronage, or mutually shared financial status. It is worth noting that in a letter from President Adams to Colonel Perkins in 1827, the president thanks the merchant for his financial advice and for introducing him to Colonel Israel Thorndike. Adams goes on to discuss his appreciation for Perkins’ assistance in helping him invest in Thorndike’s business venture, and how he values the long friendship he has had with Perkins (Adams 1827). While running the country, Adams seemingly was conducting private business and had deep financial connections with several Boston merchants and businessmen (Everett 1848). Furthermore, there was even an indication of a personal relationship as Adams referred to Perkins as both a friend and business associate. While, on the surface, it seems to not really be a big issue, but it becomes more problematic when considering the business and investments in which both Thorndike and Perkins were involved. When the issue of U.S.’ interest in the war is questioned and the relationship between the John Quincy Adams Administration, the Ottoman Empire, and the Canton Trade is examined, the entire dynamics of U.S. foreign policy changes. The traditionally accepted narrative of U.S.’ neutrality during the Greek–Ottoman conflict becomes complicated. It is not at all clear that, in treating the question of Greece, the United States was trying to uphold the Monroe Doctrine and avoiding war out of the interest of diplomatic and political stability. The Recognition of Greece

The Greek revolution went on until after the end of the Russo–Turkish War of 1829. Meanwhile, it did not produce any definite outcome. Neither the Greeks were able to achieve their liberation nor the Ottomans were able to put down the revolt. It was the outcome of the Battle of Navarino in 1827, where the allied fleets of Russia, France, and Britain destroyed the Egyptian and Ottoman fleets that turned the tide. It made it clear that the Ottoman Empire was not able, for much longer, to effectively address the Greek revolt, and as a result, on February 3, 1830, three important protocols were signed in London confirming the offer of the Greek Crown to a German prince, who could become the ruler of an independent kingdom guaranteed by the allied powers. The international status and internal polity of the already independent Greek state received its final legal articulation in the Convention of May 7, 1832. According to this Convention, the three guarantor powers (Britain, France, and Russia) offered the Greek Crown to Prince Otto, the second son of Ludwig I, the King of Bavaria, who had actively supported the Greek

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revolution. But the United States did not recognize Greece as an independent and sovereign state until 1837. The question is: why did it take so long for the United States to recognize Greece since the recognition criteria articulated by the U.S. Government during the period of South American revolutions had been met by the Greeks? One hypothesis is that the presence of guarantor powers acting on behalf of the Greeks in the eyes of the U.S. Government meant that the Greek state was not really independent and sovereign. The same reasoning may apply to the Convention of 1832. Specifically, due to his young age, Otto was not yet ready to perform his duties as the Greek monarch, and thus, the affairs of the Greek state were managed by a Bavarian Regency. Once again, the presence of guarantor powers acting on behalf of the Greeks and the presence of a Bavarian Regency managing the Greek affairs in the eyes of the U.S. Government implied that the Greek state was not really independent and sovereign. On the other hand, there is evidence that the reason for which the United States avoided to recognize Greece until 1837 was because the United States had signed a contract with the Sultan to re-build the Ottoman fleet following its destruction at the Battle of Navarino in 1827. Once the contract was fulfilled and the new Ottoman vessels were delivered, the U.S. Government proceeded with the recognition of Greece. Thus, once again, it seems that economic and commercial considerations determined U.S foreign policy decisions. Conclusion

Three important conclusions can be drawn from this study. First, in English School theory, neutrality occupies an important position as it is treated either as a primary institution of international society (Wight 1979, 111–112) or a derivative of the master institution of the balance of power (Buzan 2004, 184). U.S.’ first deep engagement with the norms of the international society concerned the rights of neutrality, formulated during the War of 1812, when the United States insisted that it had the right to stay aloof from the protracted and globalizing conflict between Britain and revolutionary France. Thus, during the early stages of the protracted struggle for the emancipation of the American colonists from Spanish rule, the U.S. policy was to investigate conditions in the revolted colonies, to maintain her neutrality in the war between Spain and the revolutionists, and to watch any developments which might enable her to take steps favorable to the nascent states. As far as the Greek case is concerned, the formal proclamation of the U.S. policy of neutrality was the result of two factors. First, the fear of the U.S. Government that the recognition of the Greeks as belligerents would lead to the war with the Ottoman Empire; and second, such a recognition could also lead to the

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undermining of U.S. commercial interests in the Ottoman Empire and the broader Mediterranean area. Second, recognition is a fundamental diplomatic practice as it is associated with state sovereignty, which is regarded by English School scholars as a primary institution of international society (Wight 1977, 110; James 1986; Mayall 2000; Jackson 2000, 102 and 1990; Buzan 2004, 184). In the case of the South American states, U.S. recognition was given when the newly independent states were “in full enjoyment of their independence” and that there was “not the most remote prospect of their being deprived of it.” In the case of Greece, however, U.S. recognition was given rather late and even after the conditions specified in the case of the South American states had been met. This reflects the primacy of economic and commercial considerations in the U.S foreign policy of that period. Third, in the introduction of the present volume, it was argued that the first phase of the United States’ international orientation was associated with the European empires and was reflected in the policy of “non-engagement” (Zoellick 2020; LaFeber 2013; Herring 2008; Perkins 1995). Joyce Kaufman (2021) identifies three concepts associated with non-engagement: isolationism, unilateralism, and neutrality. Kaufman rejects both isolationism and neutrality and argues that the United States was involved in a limited way of its own choosing, thereby making “unilateralism” the more appropriate term (Kaufman 2021, 20). From the remaining two concepts, Kaufman rejects the relevancy of neutrality because it has a specific meaning in contemporary international law: when a nation pursues a policy of neutrality, it chooses to remain apart from any aspect of the international system that would require it to take sides or get involved militarily. In contrast, in Chapter 3 of this volume, David Hendrickson contests Kaufman’s and McDougall’s argument by suggesting that “neutrality” is the best way of describing the U.S. foreign policy of that period, an argument welldeveloped in one of Hendrickson’s earlier works (Tucker and Hendrickson 1990). The content of this chapter demonstrates that both “unilateralism” and “neutrality” can be used to describe U.S. foreign policy during the first half of the nineteenth century. For example, while neutrality is central to both cases, it does not have a symmetrical application. In the case of South American revolutions, U.S. neutrality was rather strict. In the Greek case, however, U.S. neutrality meant not involvement in the Greek–Ottoman conflict as a belligerent state but commercial ties with either of the parties in conflict could be pursued; that is, unilateralism. Also, the Greek case demonstrates the flexibility with which the United States applied the standards of state recognition. As was pointed out above, Greece received a rather late recognition by the U.S. Government even if the conditions specified in the case of the South American states had already been met by Greece at least

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five years before. These observations fit well with Kaufman’s argument that pursuing a foreign policy of unilateralism allowed the United States to pick and choose when, where, and how to be neutral or provide recognition to newly independent states. References Adams, C. F. (ed.) (1874). Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary, 1795–1848. Philadelphia. Adams, C. F. (2010). The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States. Kindle edition (Amazon Digital Services). Adams, Q. J. (1827). John Quincy Adams to Col. Thomas Handasyd Perkins, 3 October 1827, microfilm roll 2, older 7, Thomas H. Perkins Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA. Bemis, S. F. (1969). John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy. New York: W.W. Norton. Buzan, B. (2004). From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapman, M. E. (2013). Pragmatic, ad hoc Foreign-Policy Making of the Early Republic: Thomas H. Perkins’s Boston–Smyrna–Canton Opium Model and Congressional Rejection of Aid for Greek Independence. International History Review 35(3), 449–464. Cline, M. A. (1930). American Attitude Toward the Greek War of Independence, 1821–1828. New York: Columbia University Press. Cresson, W. P. (1969). James Monroe. Hamden, CT: Archon Books. Dwight, E. S. (1824). The Greek Revolution: An Address, Delivered in Park Street Church, Boston. Boston, MA: Crocker and Brewster. Earle, E. M. 1927. American Interest in the Greek Cause, 1821–1827. The American Historical Review 33(1), 44–63. Everett, E. (1826). Edward Everett Letter to Col. Thomas H. Perkins, 27 December 1826, box 2 folder 7, Thomas Handasyd Perkins Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA. Everett, E. (1827). Letter of Edward Everett to Commodore John Rodgers, 3 March 1827. In America in Greece: A Traditional Policy. Edited by David M. Robinson. New York: Anatolia Press, 77–79. Everett, E. (1848). The Character of Quincy Adams, Orations and Speeches, Bartlby​ .co​m, 1848. http://www​.bartleby​.com​/400​/prose​/949​.html Forbes, J. D. (1953). Israel Thorndike: Federalist Financier. New York: Exposition Press. Fuerte, E. (1923). World History, 1815–1920. London: Metheuen. Herring, G. (2008). From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Policy Since 1776. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Horton, A. S. (1976). Jefferson and Korais: The American Revolution and the Greek Constitution. Comparative Literature Studies 13(4, December), 323–354. Jacavone, J. (2017). The Paid Vote: America’s Neutrality During the Greek War of Independence. Open Access Theses. Paper 1011.

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Jackson, R. (2000). The Global Covenant: Human Contact in a World of States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jackson, R. (1990). Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. James, A. (1986). Sovereign Statehood: The Basis of International Society. London: Allen and Unwin. Kaplan, L. S. (1993). The Monroe Doctrine and the Truman Doctrine: The Case of Greece. Journal of the Early Republic 13(1), 1–21. Kaufman, J. P. (2021). A Concise History of U.S. Foreign Policy. Firth edition. Latham: Rowman & Littlefield. LaFeber, W. (2013). The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Volume 2: Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913. Revised edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mayall, J. (2000). World Politics: Progress and Its Limits. Cambridge: Polity. Mead, W. R. (2002). Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. New York: Routledge. Monroe, J. (1823). Extracts From James Monroe’s Annual Message to Congress. In America in Greece: A tr45. Pappas, P. C. (1985). The United States and the Greek War of Independence, 1821– 1828. New York: Columbia University Press. Paxton, J. (1903). The Independence of the South-American Republics. Philadelphia: Ferris & Leach. Perkins, B. (1995). The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Volume 1: The Creation of the Republic, 1776–1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Repousis, A. (1999). The Cause of the Greeks:’ Philadelphia and the Greek War for Independence, 1821–1828. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 123(4), 333–363. Richard, C. J. (2009). The Golden Age of the Classics in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Richard, C. J. (1994). The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Robertson, W. S. (1918). The Recognition of the Hispanic American Nations by the United States. The Hispanic American Historical Review 1(3), 239–269. Robinson, D. M. (ed.) (1948). America in Greece: A Traditional Policy. New York: Anatolia Press. Rodgers, J. (1825). John Rodgers to Henry Clay, 14 October 1825. In Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to Turkey, 1818–1906. US National Archives, Waltham, MA. Schmieder, U. (2015). Spain and Spanish America in the System of the Holy Alliance. Review 38(1–2), 147–169. Seaburg, C. & Paterson, S. (1971). The Merchant Prince of Boston: Col. T.H. Perkins, 1764–1854. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Temperley, H. W. V. (1925). The Foreign Policy of Canning, 1822–1827. London: G. Bell and Sons. Tucker, R. W. and Hendrickson, D. C. (1990). Empire of Liberty. The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Oxford University Press. U.S. Congress. (1825). 18th Congress of the United States. Debates and Proceedings, 1789–1824. Annals of Congress, from a Century of Law Making for a New Nation. http://memory​.loc​.gov​/cgi​-bin​/ampage

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Webster, D. (1824). Mr. Webster’s Speech on the Greek Revolution. Boston, MA: Cummings, Hilliard, & Co. University Press. Wight, M. (1977). Systems of States. Edited by Hedley Bull. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Wight, M. (1979). Power Politics. 2nd edition. Edited by Hedley Bull and Carsten Holbraad. London: Penguin. Wood, A. (1991). Europe, 1815–1960. 7th edition. London: Longman. Zoellick, R. B. (2020). America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy. New York: Twelve Publishers.

5 THE UNITED STATES, THE MONROE DOCTRINE, AND INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY Paul Sharp

Is the Monroe Doctrine to be considered an institution of international society and one of distinctively American provenance? A historical survey of the life of the doctrine to date suggests that it cannot. The Monroe Doctrine fails the test of being an institution capable of consistently pushing and pulling people to think and act in a certain way. It is, at most, a particular iteration of an already nebulous, contested, and derivative institution—the great power sphere of influence (Deudney, 2019). Except on the question of its hemispheric scale, perhaps, it also fails the test of being an international idea of particularly American provenance. Nor, however, does a survey of the doctrine simply provide corroborative evidence for the Realist view of ideas as cudgels, taken up and put down again as needed in the pursuit of power and interests. What it does do is provide us with a useful reminder of the English School’s insight into the complex relations which exist between people, ideas, and actions. The Monroe Doctrine appears at intervals in the history of American foreign relations in a variety of guises—geographical, civilizational, ideological, and geopolitical—promoted by different people and states for different purposes and with different consequences. While it never dominates, however, it never entirely disappears because the Monroe Doctrine and thinking in doctrinal terms are both deeply woven into not how Americans see the world but how they see themselves. This being so, the doctrine is better thought of as an expression of foreign policy and the way it is justified rather than as a contribution to international life and the terms on which it is undertaken.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003334927-5

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Origins

The Monroe Doctrine,1 although it was not identified as such for another quarter century, received its first articulation in 1823, when President Monroe declared to Congress that the people of the American Continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by a European power [and that the United States] should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portions of this hemisphere, as dangerous to our peace and safety. Monroe went on to add that the United States had not interfered with “the existing Colonies or dependencies of any European power” but that any European attempt to oppress or control the destiny of states whose independence the American government had acknowledged could not be viewed “in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition towards the United States” (Sexton, 2011). The immediate prompts for his statement were the upheaval in South America caused by the struggles for independence from the Spanish Empire of its colonies there, together with an inquiry by the European great powers in the form of the Holy Alliance between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, regarding America’s position on their possible intervention in support of Spain. The Americans were concerned that Spain’s position in South America might be restored. They were even more concerned, however, that the great powers’ interventions in the concurrent revolutions in Greece and Spain itself would provide models for them becoming directly involved in the Western Hemisphere. There, the Americans argued, there should be no new colonization or re-colonization, no new interventions, and no transfers of territories from one European power to another (DeConde, 1963). Monroe’s declaration was no bolt from the blue. It had antecedents. Preceding his declaration by a number of years, for example, had been a series of what we might now call policy statements combining geopolitical, commercial, and political justifications to develop the case for asking others to keep out. The “no transfers” principle, for example, was given expression 1  Sources for the Monroe Doctrine include DeConde, A., (1963). A History of American Foreign Policy. New York, NY, Scribner; Merrill, D. and Patterson, T.G. (Eds.). (2010). Major Problems in American Foreign Relations (7th edition). Boston, MA, Cengage Learning; Perkins, D. (1955). A History of the Monroe Doctrine. New York, NY, Little, Brown; Pratt, J.W. (1967). A History of American Foreign Policy. New York, NY, Routledge; and Sexton, J. (2011). The Monroe Doctrine. New York, NY, Hill and Wang.

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in a secret Congressional Resolution of 1811, developed in response to concern about Spanish weakness in East and West Florida being exploited by other powers moving in. As Madison put it, “for a weak and decadent power such as Spain” to control so much of the United States border was “embarrassing,” while for Britain to gain possession of the area would be “impossible” for Americans to accept. Thus, arguments about interests—America’s, Britain’s, and Spain’s—judgments about the moral worth of others—decadent Spain—and claims about the decorum and self-respect of an embarrassed America itself were combined to make the case that in Madison’s words, “the United States must have the Floridas” for itself. Similarly, the no-new-colonies position had been heralded by expressions of concern at the prospects of a British-inspired Indian buffer state in the Old Northwest plus Russian settlements and British expansion into the Pacific Northwest. The prospect of territorial transfers between colonial powers also worried the Americans. What, for example, would be the implications of a transfer of Louisiana territories between France and Spain for American prospects of gaining unfettered use of the Mississippi and the port of New Orleans? As John Quincy Adams told the British minister to Washington in 1821, “Keep what is yours, but leave the rest of the continent to us,” and as he told the Russian minister, “the American continents are no longer subjects for any new European colonial establishments” (DeConde, 1963; Pratt, 1967). Monroe’s declaration was presented as a bold, and in European eyes at least, pretentious attempt to claim a great power sphere of influence for the United States. The concept of the sphere of influence was to receive increasing expression as an institution of international society toward the end of the nineteenth century in places as far apart as Siam, Persia, China, and Africa. If great powers had responsibilities toward maintaining international peace and order, so the argument ran, then they also enjoyed privileges like claiming a monopoly of influence in territories proximate to them which they regarded as being of critical importance to their security. A more secure great power would be one better placed to execute its wider responsibilities. No such elaboration lay behind Monroe’s claim, however. It was made in the context of a much older conception of the idea as the “natural” material consequences of preponderant power existing in, or proximate to, a particular place. A sphere of influence, in this sense, depended on two things—the ability of a state to claim it and the willingness of others to recognize it. As such, Monroe’s claim faced an obvious problem. The United States was weak and depended on an unacknowledged coincidence of interest with Britain regarding the newly independent South American states and the deployment of the Royal Navy to keep others out of the hemisphere. Others were not slow to point this out (Kennan, 1951). However, it would be wrong to see Monroe’s claim as just the misstep of a debutante onto the dance floor of Machiavellian power

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politics. Although the Monroe Doctrine can be interpreted through powerful political and rational framings that stress the role of strategic, political, and commercial concerns in shaping the declaration and the policies to which it gave expression, there was more going on. Permeating the thinking of Americans regarding their own presence and the presence of others on the North American continent and in the Western Hemisphere was the sense that together, they constituted a new world separate along a number of dimensions from the old one. The four Papal Bulls and the Treaty of Tordesilla in 1494, which had purported to divide this new world between the Spanish and the Portuguese empires, are remembered for a pretension even greater than that of Monroe’s declaration, but the resulting carve up was also intended to keep others out. The Treaty of Whitehall between Britain and France in 1686 stated that even if they went to war with each other in Europe, the two countries should maintain peace and neutrality in America—an aspiration premised on the understanding that America was separate, different, and lay “beyond the line” of European laws and treaties (DeConde, 1963). This sense that America and eventually the Americas were a separate sphere in which different and better morals and laws were obtained from those of the old world, and from which, therefore, the old world should be excluded, was adopted by the Americans themselves. America, North and South, according to Thomas Jefferson, had a set of interests “distinct from those of Europe.” She should, he said, “have a system of her own, separate and apart from that of Europe.” While Europe was “laboring to become the domicile of despotism,” he continued, America’s “endeavor should surely be to make our hemisphere that of freedom” (DeConde, 1963). From Declaration to Doctrine

Twenty-five years passed before anyone actually used the term, “the Monroe Doctrine.” Americans argued over whether Monroe’s statement implied a material commitment to the cause of independence in South America and Haiti or merely moral support. They argued over whether either form of support would violate Washington’s injunction about avoiding foreign commitments. Indeed, rather than keeping other people out, they were more often absorbed by their own attempts to get into places like the British West Indies for trade purposes and British North America to bring Canadians, or some of them, into the United States. In terms of keeping people out, their primary concern seemed to be curtailing attempts by the Royal Navy to stop and “visit” American ships suspected of being engaged in transporting slaves. Indeed, during the quarter of a century “long slumber” between declaration and doctrine, its putative red lines were crossed on multiple occasions by the Europeans it aspired to exclude from the hemisphere. Britain obtained the

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Falkland Islands, occupied Roatan Island off the coast of Honduras, gained more territory for British Honduras (Belize) and strengthened its support for the Mosquito protectorate on the east coast of Nicaragua. Meanwhile, France enlarged its stake in French Guyana at the expense of Brazil and briefly occupied Vera Cruz to recover debts from Mexico. Britain, according to Pratt, was more likely than the United States to complain about the activities of other Europeans in the New World (Pratt, 1967). However, the long slumber ended in the 1840s in response to three political developments closer to home. First, Texas, which, with American help, had become independent from Mexico in 1837, was torn by disputes between those who wished to join the United States, those who wished to take advantage of British and French support for a greater Texas expanding to the Pacific, and those who wanted Mexico to return. Second, California— properly upper California and territory which was to become the states of Arizona and New Mexico, together with parts of what would be Wyoming and Colorado—similarly had become a contested zone between rising numbers of American settlers and the Mexican authorities. Third, the United States had become increasingly discontented with the joint British–American occupation of the Oregon country in the Pacific North West. Regarding the latter and how far south the boundary between British and American possessions should be drawn, the American claim was expressed in the conventional terms of geopolitical necessity and law. There were no good ports in the area controlled by the United States—indeed, as far south as San Francisco, and America needed a port on the Pacific coast. Further, the Oregon country, the Americans argued, should be regarded as a natural extension of the Louisiana Territory and, as such, had been transferred to the United States with the Louisiana Purchase. In support of this claim, Americans were working hard to get more boots, albeit civilian ones, on the ground in the Oregon territory. All three developments posed difficult problems. The Oregon claim risked a conflict with the world’s leading power. The California and Texas claims involved local inhabitants with divergent views and raised constitutional questions about absorbing people without their consent. In addition, Texas posed political questions about its effect on the balance between slave states and free states in the Union (DeConde, 1963). Nonetheless, by the end of the 1840s, force of arms, both regular and irregular, had created new political facts both in California and on the border between Texas—now part of the United States—and Mexico. This was all very conventional great power activity directed at expanding and securing borders and pre-empting the possibility that rivals might try the same. Yet, the themes and language of Monroe were present throughout the attempts of the American government to explain and justify its actions. Early in the California crisis in 1845, for example, James Buchanan, then Secretary of State, had declared that the United States “could not view with

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indifference the transfer of California to Great Britain or any other European power.” His President, James Polk, stated that “the people of this continent alone have the right to decide their own destiny.” He added that should any of them “constituting an independent state” propose, as Texas was doing, to join with the United States, then this would be “a question for them and us to determine without foreign imposition.” The notion of joining the United States, however, was also located in a different framework, that of John O’Sullivan’s “Manifest Destiny.” It was America’s destiny, O’Sullivan and other expansionists argued during the Oregon crisis, “to spread over the whole continent.” Justifications for the claims to territory in Oregon and elsewhere were not to be found in the “musty records and the voyages of old sea captains, or of Spanish treaties.” For O’Sullivan, they derived from a far more robust, concrete, and simpler principle, the “law of nature” and, hence, of nations (DeConde, 1963). This was at once both simpler in conception and narrower in scope than the idea of the free peoples of the hemisphere being left alone by the Europeans. By the time the Monroe Doctrine was first explicitly identified as such around 1850, it had grown from a set of statements about how the Europeans should not intervene, further colonize, or transfer territories in the Western Hemisphere. Now, it had become part of an argument that suggested that free peoples in the hemisphere might freely decide in consultations with the Americans to join the United States. Indeed, it would be natural for them to decide to do so, and American foreign policy should be premised on this expectation. The Monroe Doctrine Redefined

In 1848, three years after President Polk’s statement that other free peoples in the hemisphere might want to throw in their lot with the Americans, he added what became known as his corollary. They could join the United States, if they so wished, but they could not rejoin their former colonial powers or surrender themselves to new ones (DeConde, 1963; Pratt, 1967). This attempt to curtail the ability of other peoples to determine their political futures was prompted by a renewal of interest on the part of the Americans and others in securing transit rights in Nicaragua and that part of Colombia which is now Panama, initially for railways but later for a canal, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Locals keen on determining their own future might cite the Monroe Doctrine in support of closer ties with the United States, but they certainly were not supposed to cite it when making claims for securing support from Britain and France. As such, the Polk Corollary sat more comfortably in the world of great power politics and calculations about spheres of influence and commercial advantage than in the world of sweeping claims about the currents of history, destiny, and nature all flowing in America’s direction. South Americans certainly saw it as such. For

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example, the Argentine, Juan Bautista Alberdi, maintained the hemispheres were not “two worlds … they are parts of one geographical and political world.” To South Americans, the doctrine attributable to Monroe, is a contradiction, the daughter of egotism. Even though the United States owes everything to Europe, it wants to isolate America from Europe. (Merrill and Patterson, 2010) The immediate fruit of Polk’s corollary, the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty of 1849 between the United States and Britain, also belonged to the world of great power politics and spheres of influence. Both states agreed neither to seek exclusive rights in the Central American isthmus nor to fortify their positions there, at least for now. Further arguments in the 1850s between the two over Britain’s attempt to expand its Honduran territories and maintain its Mosquito Protectorate in Nicaragua prompted invocations of the Monroe Doctrine, but they were also settled by great power politics. In a pattern soon to be repeated, Britain’s commitment to its interests in the area was exposed as being less than America’s—it was dealing with the demands of the Crimean War at the same time. And both states were worried by the way the rivalries of the Central American republics and the antics of filibusterers and other adventurers who were threatening their shared interest in stability in the area. Britain ended its attempts at expansion and abandoned the Nicaraguan protectorate in return for U.S. assurances that it accepted its established position in British Honduras (DeConde, 1963). By mid-century, therefore, expressions of the Monroe Doctrine had become both more clearly articulated and strengthened. At the same time, however, its potentially radical framing role had faded. It might be cited in support of specific foreign policies, but so might other rationales and arguments. Prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War, for example, further disputes with Mexico over transit rights were settled with a land transfer, cash, and commitments to halting Indian raids in both directions. Arguments with British North America were focused more on fish and Great Lakes canals than Canada’s future existence and America’s destiny. Cuba, while included in the scope of Monroe’s claims, was presented as what might be termed a national security issue broadly defined. As the prospects for a canal between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans increased, the Caribbean island’s geopolitical significance loomed large. As Spain’s problems with holding on to Cuba increased, so too did the fear that either it or Britain might end slavery there and create another Haiti with all its associated problems. And as these fears increased, so too did the prospect that events in Cuba and Haiti would have an impact on the increasingly difficult debate over slavery in the United States itself.

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The Monroe Doctrine Challenged and Diminished

The fight over slavery, of course, and the ensuing civil war to which it was the major contributory cause led to a period of great American weakness and, as a consequence, external challenges to the claims set forth by the Monroe Doctrine. In 1861, Spain re-annexed the Dominican Republic. Its actions, it claimed, were prompted by requests from the inhabitants and therefore consistent, in Madrid’s reading, with the principles which guided American policy. Secretary Seward invoked the Monroe Doctrine. Spain said it did not recognize the doctrine, although three years later, when Spanish forces temporarily seized islands in a dispute with Peru, it claimed that nothing in the actions it had taken posed a challenge to “Monroe’s famous declaration” (Deconde, 1963). This tacit acceptance resulted in part from it becoming clear that the United States was going to emerge from its civil war united and more powerful. However, it also resulted from American success in surviving and seeing off a far larger challenge—namely France’s attempt to create a Mexican ally with a European aristocrat, Maximilian, installed as Emperor in 1864. This posed a direct challenge to Monroe’s claim that the Europeans should neither intervene in nor re-colonize parts of the Western Hemisphere and to Polk’s corollary that this applied even if they were invited by locals. Yet, the Monroe Doctrine was not explicitly invoked, except perhaps by a Southern offer to ditch it and recognize Maximilian in return for French diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy (DeConde, 1967). The flow of events favored the United States. The Dominicans changed their minds and asked for American help in forcing out Spain once again. Maximilian could not win his war against the Juarez government whom the Americans still recognized and, like the British before them in Nicaragua, the French lost interest in their project as developments in Europe—in their case, the rise of Prussia—began to command their attention. It might be thought that the scaling down of European ambitions from recognizing Maximilian’s Empire to being concerned only with negotiating his physical safety and escape from the wreck, “marked an impressive victory for the Monroe Doctrine,” even non-invoked as it was (DeConde, 1963, Pratt; 1967). It is difficult to agree with this conclusion, however. More proximate causes associated with shifts in the local balances of power and interest suggest a simpler explanation. Both Maximilian and the Confederacy were incapable of securing the military victories they needed. And America’s continued continental expansion and opposition to others doing likewise after the civil war was increasingly undertaken without reference to Monroe. At first, these changes were not apparent. The Alaska purchase in 1867 could be seen as a satisfying tidying of the continental map, at least once British North America was absorbed. The prospect of the latter seemed to be increased by further arguments with Britain over Canada

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in which the Irish Question became involved after 1866. The prospect of the latter generated a war scare in which the as yet still-mobilized Union army was thought to be heading north while the British hurried to re-fortify parts of the celebrated “undefended border,” regarded as de-militarized, if not undisputed, since the Rush Bagot Treaty of 1817. In fact, “Seward’s Folly,” as it became known for a while, was not universally welcomed and resulted from opportunistic bargain basement secret diplomacy, while the resolution of the Canadian dispute became part of a broader settlement with Britain which appeared to be based, not on conceptions of a continental, hemispheric, and separate community, but on an understanding of how the relations of a whole and reasonable international society ought to work. The Monroe Doctrine and Civilizing International Relations

This latter sentiment found its initial expression in the 1871 Treaty of Washington. This resulted in Britain and the United States bundling outstanding issues and agreeing to submit them to various arbitrations. Despite quite theatrical displays of anger, first by the British representative and secondly by the American one, the two countries managed to reach an agreement on British compensatory payments for the damage caused by Confederate raiders built, although not armed, in Britain, and on compensatory payments by the United States for damage caused by “Fenian” raiders in British North America and arising from property seizures in the United States. In addition, differences over American access to the Canadian fisheries were eased, and a recommendation favorable to the United States over the ownership of disputed islands in the Juan de Fuca Strait made by the German Kaiser, which also clarified the Oregon boundary, was accepted by both parties. Arbitration was an established international practice, but the Washington process was distinguished by its scale—six commissioners from each party agreeing to the establishment of an international tribunal meeting in Geneva. It was also distinguished by the precedents which it set, later employed at the Congress of Berlin and at the international conferences in The Hague at the end of the century, on how to arbitrate disputes, how the responsibilities of neutrals should be carefully exercised, and on how the principle of extraterritoriality should be regarded as a courtesy between states, and not as a right upon which they were entitled to stand. As the Halifax Commissioners engaged in the Canadian fisheries question declared, by avoiding the “dreadful arbitrament of the sword” and by referring “their differences to peaceful arbitration … England and America, two of the most powerful nations on earth” had brought about “an epoch in the history of civilization” (DeConde, 1963). Perhaps so. The 1871 treaty seems to be part of an understanding of international relations as a rational activity in a potentially reasonable world.

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It was made possible by a new sentiment in which Monroe’s exclusionary claims of a radical, hemispheric community and O’Sullivan’s appeals to a natural continental order were gradually replaced by a sense of cultural solidarity between the British Empire and an emerging American empire. To be sure, American expansionists called for a “patriotism of race as well as country” (DeConde, 1963). They spoke of a “new” Manifest Destiny, one in which Britain and the United States would realize their shared interest in giving each other elbow room to do what they wanted in terms of expansion and empire. What followed for the balance of the century was a steady attempt to expand American territory and influence in Hawaii, Colombia (Panama), Nicaragua, the Danish Virgin Islands, and, eventually, Cuba and the Philippines. Where British and American interests rubbed up against one another, the Monroe Doctrine was often cited in support of the American position, but it was so in ways that differed from its use in the past. When interest in Nicaragua and Panama was rekindled by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, for example, President Hayes stated that any new canal would have to be under “American control.” The Monroe Doctrine, he argued, took precedence over the no-monopoly and no-militarization provisions of the Clayton–Bulwer agreement. Nevertheless, in the long-drawn-out discussions about where to locate and how to finance the project, Hayes and his successors increasingly used a different framing. America’s control of the canal, in Grover Cleveland’s words, would be for “the world’s benefit; a trust for Mankind” (DeConde, 1963). Events elsewhere during the same period, however, suggest that the sense of assuming a burden on behalf of civilization, or even just the Anglo–Saxon or inter-American portions of that civilization, was only one consideration among several informing American policy in the hemisphere. In the early 1890s, a long-running dispute on the border between Venezuela and British Guiana rekindled. The British laid claim to a considerable piece of Venezuelan territory, and the Venezuelans themselves attempted to invoke the Monroe Doctrine in Washington. The British claim, they argued, if satisfied, would amount to re-colonization in the Western Hemisphere by a European power. To complicate matters, in the midst of the argument, Royal Marines landed in Nicaragua in support of an attempt to collect damages for assaults on British property and a British consul. Nicaragua launched a similar appeal to Washington. The Americans were under considerable pressure at home to act. As Senator Henry Cabot Lodge argued, “the supremacy of the Monroe Doctrine should be established, peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must” (DeConde, 1967). The American Secretary of State, Richard Olney, sent a note to the British government requesting that the British accept arbitration and claiming that the Monroe Doctrine was “a doctrine of American public law” which had “long been universally conceded” and which bound the United States to intervene if Britain refused its proposal. This was not quite

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the expression of hemispheric solidarity it might have sounded, however. In what is sometimes called the “Olney Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, the Secretary of State added Today the US is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition … in addition to all other grounds, its infinite resources combined with its isolated position render it master of the situation and practically invulnerable against all other powers. (Pratt, 1967) The British accepted the substance of the proposal, referring their dispute with Venezuela to arbitration which settled in Britain’s favor in 1899. Under the Olney/Paunceforte agreement of 1897, they also agreed to a five-year period in which a broader system of arbitration would be used by Britain and the United States when diplomacy failed. However, they rejected the framing of the American proposals on the dispute in terms of the Monroe Doctrine. In the words of the British prime minister, Lord Salisbury, the United States government was not entitled to affirm a universal proposition, with reference to a number of independent states for whose conduct it assumes no responsibility, that its interests are necessarily concerned in whatever may befall those states simply because they are situated in the Western hemisphere. (Pratt, 1967) The Monroe Doctrine and Policing the Hemisphere

Olney’s strong version of the Monroe Doctrine and Britain’s rejection of it, notwithstanding events in Cuba, demonstrated that the grounds for America’s increasing interventions in its neighbors were shifting, as was the likelihood of their acceptance by other great powers. For much of the nineteenth century, Cuba had presented a pressing problem, although one in which the high costs to America of “fixing” it generally inhibited the formation of a domestic political consensus around doing enough. Cuban nationalists struggled for independence from Spain, but their movement was divided by race and class regarding the kind of independence they sought. Spain sought to hang on, although it flirted with various forms of home rule or indirect rule from time to time. The United States had its own views on what sort of independence it wanted to see in Cuba and generally preferred continued Spanish rule to some of the alternatives. For example, as noted already above, it did not want to see another “slave Republic” like Haiti or a free Cuba in which the direct rule of Spain was replaced by the indirect

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rule of another European great power. Official attempts at purchasing the island were made by American governments, and unofficial attempts were made by American filibusterers to seize it, without success. During a civil war in the 1870s, American policy toward Cuba became increasingly torn between citing the Monroe Doctrine to keep other European powers out and asking those same Europeans to become involved in exerting pressure on Spain to pursue reforms there. By the last decade of the century, the Cuban fever chart had risen in response to dynamics as transnational and multi-issued as those of any armed conflict today. The economic dislocations imposed by new American sugar duties helped precipitate a revolt to which Spain responded with atrocities and concentration camps. The American public was fully exposed to the details of these by the new mass media and a senatorial fact-finding mission. Damage to American property, the detention and execution of dual nationals, and incidents between gunboats all raised the temperature to the point that when the USS Maine blew up in Havana harbor, even a reluctant President McKinley was compelled to issue Spain an ultimatum which left it little choice but to declare war (DeConde, 1963). The representatives of the great powers in the Washington diplomatic corps met to work up a memorandum urging restraint upon the United States government, but they did not deliver it. Their inaction as the Americans provided decisive armed support to the Cuban rebels is sometimes presented as evidence that, despite their sympathy for Spain, the European powers had finally accepted the Monroe Doctrine and its claims to hemispheric autonomy and American preponderance within it. This may be so, but as the captures of the Philippines and Guam suggest, American thought and action were now operating on a bigger stage on which the Monroe Doctrine did not apply. Neither did the language of great powers and spheres of influence. Instead, McKinley and his successors began to talk in terms of “the new duties and responsibilities” (as well as the “commercial opportunities”) of becoming “a great nation” (DeConde, 1963). The American administration of Cuba and the Philippines would be temporary affairs ending when the conditions for good governments and sound economies had been established. As the Platt Amendment showed in 1901, however, those conditions were strenuous; the independence to be exercised once they were satisfied would be circumscribed, and the United States would enjoy a right of return should either of the peoples being nursed to a higher standard suffer a relapse. In the same year, Britain dropped its objections to an American monopoly plus fortifications on a future canal partly in return for American concessions on the Alaskan boundary and partly because they found the likely price of doing otherwise too high. Two years later, having finally accepted the Panama route as the shortest and cheapest, President Theodore Roosevelt threw America’s weight behind Panamanian separatists and recognized them as soon as they had broken with Colombia. He did so, however, not

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in the name of the Monroe Doctrine but, echoing Cleveland some two decades earlier, “as an act justified by the interests of collective civilization” (DeConde, 1967). Claims about the Western Hemisphere’s separateness, the need to keep Europeans out of it, and the possibility that its inhabitants might eventually throw in their lot with the United States were gone. They had given way to claims about civilization, the standards required to be a full member of it, and the burdensome responsibility that some, principally the great powers and the Anglo–Saxons within that grouping, had in bringing others up to that standard of civilization and holding them to it. This shift was made explicit in 1903 by a new dispute between Venezuela, on the one hand, and Britain and Germany, on the other, over Venezuela’s unpaid debts, which emerged during the events leading up to the declaration of Panama’s independence. Warships were dispatched, and the Venezuelan government of Cipriano Castro appealed to the United States, citing the Monroe Doctrine. Supporting the Venezuelans, in what sometimes became known as the Drago doctrine, the Argentine foreign minister suggested that the Monroe Doctrine should be interpreted as ruling out the collection of debts by force (von Glahn, 1986). The idea that the Monroe Doctrine might be invoked by others to get the United States to fulfill its hemispheric responsibilities posed a difficult challenge for the Americans. At first, Roosevelt argued that the doctrine did not apply as the European powers were not seeking territory. Indeed, as Vice-President, he had previously said that “if any South American state misbehaves towards any European country, let the Europeans spank it.” The important thing was that standards were set, maintained, and enforced. He soon shifted, however, fearing, according to DeConde, that such a state of affairs would encourage and privilege those who were prepared to use force to recover their money. Instead, in 1904, Roosevelt offered what became known as his eponymous “Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. He declared that, In the Western Hemisphere, the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence to the exercise of international police power. (DeConde, 1963) However, Roosevelt’s Corollary was not framed in terms of the importance of keeping the Europeans out of the hemisphere. It was framed in terms of justifying why the United States had to act in upholding broader international society standards in the hemisphere. If the Americans intended “to say ‘Hands Off’ to the powers of Europe” exercising those responsibilities, they could scarcely do nothing themselves when the need arose. Framed thus, he argued that Britain’s and Germany’s willingness to submit their argument

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with Venezuela to arbitration at the suggestion of the United States, indicated their explicit recognition of the Monroe Doctrine. Indeed, Britain’s Prime Minister, Lord Balfour, seemed to offer such recognition in the House of Commons when he said he believed that it would be a great gain to civilization if the United States of America were more actively to interest themselves in making arrangements by which these constantly reoccurring difficulties between European powers and certain states of South America could be avoided. (DeConde, 1963) Whatever he may have been recognizing, however, it was not the doctrine of Monroe. Far from keeping the Europeans and their international society of despots out of the Western Hemisphere, it was a claim to the right to import a conception of that international society which increasingly bore the stamp of American preferences into the countries of South and Central America. As for the concurrent Panama dispute, Colombia, complying with the spirit of the times, suggested arbitration. The United States government declined the offer. Not only had Panama’s independence been justified by the interests of “collective civilization,” Roosevelt maintained, but to submit to arbitration would be inconsistent with America’s national honor (DeConde, 1967). The U.S. government did eventually agree to pay Columbia a substantial sum of money, although the U.S. Senate prevented the payment from being accompanied by an expression of the United States’ regret for its role in the episode. Conclusion

The Monroe Doctrine did not die as a result of this shift of emphasis from keeping other people out of the hemisphere to justifying the Americans’ need to go where they needed within it. It continued to be invoked on occasions. Indeed, another corollary, that of Henry Cabot Lodge, surfaced in 1911, by which the United States claimed a right to order American companies not to sell lands with potentially strategic significance in Mexico to enterprises owned by the citizens of potentially hostile powers, in this case, Japan (DeConde, 1963). In the U.S. Senate debates on the League of Nations in 1919, the argument was made that membership would involve a commitment to international arbitration, which was at odds with the Monroe Doctrine. It was cited by Roosevelt’s government regarding the fate of Dutch and French possessions in the Caribbean and South America after those two countries had been occupied by Germany in 1940. Concurrently, however, elements of it were successively repudiated or reformulated. The Clark Amendment in 1928, for example, undercut the Roosevelt Corollary by re-stating

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that the Monroe Doctrine was about keeping the Europeans out and that arrangements between the United States and countries like Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua did not fall under it. By the end of the Second World War, the doctrine had been, in Pratt’s term, “continentalized,” into a statement about inter-American collective hemispheric defense against Communism in which everyone, not just the United States, had a responsibility to act, and about which everyone, not just the United States, could enthuse (Pratt, 1967). A close reading of the diplomatic record suggests that the Monroe Doctrine cannot be regarded as a secondary institution in the strong sense of guiding and shaping international practice in the way primary institutions like the ideas of sovereign states, international law, and great powers do. Nor can it be seen simply be seen as a specifically American expression of the great power privilege of enjoying spheres of influence. It reduces neither to a classic example of “the policy of the status quo,” as Hans Morgenthau identified it, nor can it be presented as a Western hemispheric version of the Locarno Pact institutionalizing the balance of power by a system of overlapping guarantees as Simonds and Emery suggest (Morgenthau, 1967; Simonds and Emery, 1935). It appeared on occasions in both guises and was certainly interpreted by others as such. Overall, however, it is hard to find examples of the Americans or anyone else acting as they did because the Monroe Doctrine channeled them in that direction. Meanwhile, examples abound of it being cited as a justification of actions taken for a complex of obvious reasons and less clear motives. The puzzle then is to account for how such a nebulous and shape-shifting concept enjoyed such a long life and, indeed, continues to do so. In 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry’s asserted that “the era of the Monroe Doctrine is over” (Kerry, 2013). He was signaling an end to the period of interventions under the previous administration. Six years later, John Bolton, President Trump’s then-national security adviser, proclaimed “for all to hear, that the Monroe Doctrine is alive and well.” The Trump administration was “dusting it off,” not as a matter of ideology but of “good old-fashioned power politics” (Bolton,2019). Perhaps, as Graham Alison has argued, the United States, in its currently reduced circumstances, must adjust to accepting that other great powers have spheres of influence (Allison, 2020). And perhaps, as in previous times of feeling threatened, concerns about its own neighborhood and spheres of influence are giving salience to the Monroe Doctrine once again. If so, this might suggest that, while the Monroe Doctrine does not constitute a distinctively American contribution to the operations of international society and its institutions, there is, nevertheless, something distinctively American about it—its doctrinal form of expression, the attempt to reconcile ideals with interests and power, and to bundle all three into something bigger of exceptional character and universal significance. These are all familiar themes, of course, but, like the Monroe Doctrine itself, they are

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claims belonging to American foreign policy and not to American thought about how international societies and their institutions emerge, develop, change, and ought to operate. References Allison, G. (2020). The new spheres of influence: Sharing the globe with other great powers. Foreign Affairs, 67 (2), 30–40. Bolton, J. (2019, May 1). US military action in Venezuela ‘possible’ Pompeo. France 24. Retrieved from https://www​.france24​.com​/en​/20190501​-us​-military​-action​ -venezuela​-possible​-pompeo DeConde, A. (1963). A History of American Foreign Policy. New York: Scribner. Deudney, D.H. (2019, October 25). Sphere of Influence. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www​.britannica​.com ​/topic ​/sphere​-of​-influence von Glahn, G. (1986). Law Among Nations (5th edition). New York: Macmillan. Kennan, G.F. (1951). The war with Spain. In G.F. Kennan (ed.), American Diplomacy: 1900–1950. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 9–23. Kerry, J. (2013, November 18). Kerry Declares the End of the Monroe Doctrine. Al Jazeera. Merrill, D. and Patterson, T.G. (Eds.). (2010). Major Problems in American Foreign Relations (7th edition). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. Morgenthau, H.J. (1967). Politics Among Nations (4th edition). New York: Knopf. Perkins, D. (1955). A History of the Monroe Doctrine. New York: Little, Brown. Pratt, J.W. (1967). A History of American Foreign Policy. New York: Routledge. Sexton, J. (2011). The Monroe Doctrine. New York: Hill and Wang. Simonds, F.H. and Emery, B. (1935). The Great Powers in World Politics: International Relations and Economic Nationalism. New York: American Book Company.

6 SLAVES, INDIANS, AND EUROPEAN LEGAL FORMALISM IN NINETEENTHCENTURY AMERICA Christopher R. Rossi

Following the French Revolution, America, along with much of Europe began to receive the doctrines of what came to be known as “legal formalism.” These teachings held that law was issued from a single source, that it was made, not found, and that parliaments, congresses, and even revolutionary committees were supreme in their law-making functions. Formalism played a role in the U.S.’ ascendancy as a hegemonic power at the turn of the twentieth century, but to assess its significance, attention must also revert to a study of its history and its interplay with two formative events that helped to shape America’s character—ending the international slave trade in 1808 and Indian removal in the 1830s. The emergence of formalism as a legal method, inconsistently employed by courts to rationalize these events, reflected the young republic’s outlook and engagement in the world. Formalism’s appeal sprang from its simplicity, but it hid deeply ambivalent characteristics. These characteristics reflected uncertainties about America’s core principles and their expression in world affairs. Where did legal formalism come from? How did it affect the international slave trade, the status of indigenous peoples, and the American character? Addressing these questions uncovers a significant American story. Origins of Legal Formalism

Formalism’s first appearance is associated with John Austin, English legal philosopher, who wrote The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832), a work largely ignored in Austin’s lifetime. Austin developed the concept of legal positivism or the belief that law is created to promote rules, order, and stability and not to secure lofty principles of morality and justice. Positivism DOI: 10.4324/9781003334927-6

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separates law from morality and discounts any necessary connection between the two. It is often said that positivists simply try to understand the world as it is (lex lata) and not to project how it should be (de lege ferenda). Formalism developed alongside positivism over the nineteenth century. It emphasized that every legal decision represented the application of an “abstract legal proposition to a concrete fact situation” (Weber 1978, pp. 657–658). Its logic conceived of law as a gapless system of propositions that could be applied to settle disputes. Whatever could not be “‘construed’ rationally in legal terms” became “legally irrelevant.” Every social action had to apply, execute, or infringe upon a legal proposition derived from within this gapless legal ordering of all social conduct (657–658). Finding the appropriate legal principles to rationalize concessions to the international slave trade and to justify Indian removal reflected sustained divisions in the American mindset, divisions that would pit material interests against republican ideals and heighten America’s ambivalence about its role in the world order. Emphasizing the completeness of the legal order, it relied on the ability of judges to rationally find and apply the one and only applicable legal principle to solve any given dispute (Leiter 2010, p. 111). This reliance developed from birth defects within the fifteenth-century English Court system (called the Common law system), which originally deprived many aggrieved subjects of the right to seek justice before the king because the Court system only allowed for a limited number of complaints (causes of action/writs) (Rossi 1993, p. 32). Formalism closed these loopholes by allowing judges more discretion to solve disputes in the king’s name. Formalism was regarded as a modernizing influence and a problem-solving tool for judicial use. The young American republic had modeled its legal system on English Common law and its reliance on judge-made law. This was the portal through which formalism entered into the chambers of American courts. Advocates of formalism contended that it systematized legal reasoning and contributed to mitigating the “explosive contradictions” of plantation agrarianism in the South and industrial capitalism in the North (Moore 2002, p. 177). Detractors came to deride it as a heresy that abridged fundamental republican ideals (Weinrib 1988, 949). They claimed it morphed into a “rigidly doctrinaire” style of judgment, free of non-legal infiltrates from political philosophy (Goetsch 1980, p. 221). Formalism’s Key Component: Immanence

Formalism is a difficult concept to define. Even today, its many usages call into question the utility of the term (Posner 1986–87, 180; Allott 2012). At its simplest, formalism located the moral authority of law from within the domestic order: In a word, formalism embraced the concept of immanence

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(Lindell 2012–2013, p. 181). Unlike the philosophy of natural law, which relied on abstract principles external to the legal world, formalism looked to principles derived from internal footprints of the legal order. So conceived, immanence presented law as a self-contained system that could somehow be “[elaborated and] sustained from within” and “not imported from without” (Weinrib p. 953). Judges were to interpret these rules internal to the domestic order and apply them to emergent and ever-changing fact patterns (pp. 955, 956; Nelson 1975, p. 982). The aspect of immanence made an impression on the early, unsettled state of the American legal mindset as it searched internally for the applicable rational principles to confront the international slave trade, all the while protecting America’s slave-based agrarian economic sector and emerging interests as a seafaring nation. This mindset also sought to terminate the sovereign, treaty-based claims of Natives while at the same time upholding the sanctity of international agreements. The search for the applicable legal principle to reconcile these pursuits presented great challenges. The domestic system was not as self-informed as formalism suggested. Immanence promoted anglophone and continental conceptions of law. These conceptions “tied into a sense of community values that could be objectively identified,” even though these footprints also traced from unmindful connections to conquest and expansion, land management and appropriation (McHugh 2004, p. 30), and the Western world’s “civilizing mission” (mission civilisatrice). Formalism’s Story, As Usually Told

As usually told, formalism in America dates from the end of the Civil War (Duxbury 1995, pp. 1, 9). There, if not slightly before, a market-oriented transformation in American law began to separate the Common law from its previous concerns for the “substantive fairness of economic exchange” (Horwitz 1977, p. 253). American Common law began to prefer individual desires over paternalistic protections (for instance, safeguarding against usury—the charging of excessive interest on loans), and it began to promote material interests involving economic and political power accumulation (p. 253). It built on an increasing demand for lawyers, which census information indicated began to grow in 1850 (Abel 1986, pp. 7–8) and which turned the former and loose-knit apprenticeship system that had socialized lawyers into the reading of law in university law schools (Bryant 2001, p. 21), inculcating the central doctrines of legal formalism. During his tenure as the Dean of the Harvard Law School (1870–1895), Christopher Columbus Langdell introduced the revolutionary method of studying settled cases (Speziale 1980, p. 1). He introduced the Socratic method, a rigorous interrogation of student answers designed to tacitly develop proper formalistic reasoning (Overholser

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1993, p. 67). Langdell espoused the revelatory power of legal formalism, holding that “[l]aw, considered as a science, consist[ed] of certain principles or doctrines” reducible and ascertainable through the self-contained case method of study (Langdell 1871, p. vi). To Langdell, the ascertainment of law lent itself to principles of scientific method, a technique that professed the study of law through the use of the syllogism and even by application of mathematical principles (Cook 1927, p. 303). The transformation helped to solidify the professional standing of American legal practitioners, who more boldly began to self-represent as experts in the objective application of politically neutral legal rules. In 1848, David Dudley Field drafted a systematized code of civil procedure. This code drew from European-style codification efforts to standardize legislative policy as the sole source of law (Funk and Mullen 2018, p. 138). The so-called “Field Code” spread across jurisdictions of the United States and marked a “central event in Anglo-America legal history” up through this Gilded Age of the 1870s (p. 134). It marked an important point of contact between the judge-made development of the English and American Common law systems and the legislatively-created, code-based designs of continental systems (Civil law systems). American developments followed those in Europe. An esprit d’internationalité began to professionalize the continental practice of international law. This spirit arose through scholarly articles presented in the Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée, first published in 1868, and then with the founding of the Institut de droit international in 1873 by a new breed—the “Men of 1873” (Koskenniemi 2002, p. 3; Hathaway and Shapiro 2017). Leaders of this international legal society— such as the Belgian jurist and editor Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns, the Whewell Chair holder at Cambridge University John Westlake, and the Swiss historicist Johann Bluntschli—sought to more systematically articulate international legal science during this belle époque (p. 12; Madsen 2004, p. 105). They began to self-represent as experts in international law and to treat the field as distinct from national systems. They regarded states as the proper subjects of international law, and they thought international law could be used to mediate and settle international disputes. Developments on the continent had bolstered this belief. Henry Dunant promoted the adoption in 1864 of the original Geneva Convention to mitigate suffering in times of war. By 1867, Frédéric Passy had organized the Société des Amis de la Paix (renamed in 1889 the Société française pour l’arbitrage entre nations), which essentially launched the international peace movement. Both men promoted the maturation of newborn organizations of international law, and they would share the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. “[M]omentous events” in the 1870s also fortified the development of the burgeoning society of international law—principally the Franco–Prussian War (1870–1871),

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which stimulated the movement to constrain war, and the arbitral resolution of a major dispute between England and the United States regarding the Alabama Claims (1871–1872) (Abrams 1957, pp. 363–364), which reinforced the credibility of third-party dispute resolution (Bingham 2005, p. 24). The rapid professionalization of legal practice and the characterization of international law as a distinct field of study contributed to the establishment of formalism as part of a nineteenth-century “Golden Age” of international law. Lassa Oppenheim, Hersch Lauterpacht, J.L. Brierly, and Hans Kelsen figured importantly in the extension of this Golden Age into the twentieth century (Onuf 2008, p. 2). Collectively, they continued to promote the idea that international law “could be scientifically identified and applied” to the territorial state (McHugh, p. 291) and promoted the idea of international law as a distinct and neutral set of principles applicable to sovereign dispute settlement. In America, it produced the 8th edition of Wheaton’s Elements of International Law (1866). Published originally in 1836, and the first English language treatise devoted to the subject, Dana’s edition, with its erudite and elaborate notes, reflected a conspicuous regard for a more pragmatic international law, distinct from the “theorizing” and “impractical tone” of the time-honored forebearers of international law (North American Review 1866, p. 467). The Dana edition strengthened formalism’s Anglo–European connection. His edition updated American’s rule orientation with specific hemispheric practices, including a fifteen-page footnote on the Monroe Doctrine (Wheaton, pp. 97–112), multiple references to the Trent Affair, and the American Civil War (North American Review, p. 468). At the same time, it demonstrated some of formalism’s contradictory elements. Dana’s edition embraced, if not magnified, Wheaton’s Westerncentric worldview (Navari Chapter Below, Onuf, p. 4; Liu 2012, p. 1132). Dana regarded Wheaton’s work as the “most remarkable proof of the advance of Western civilization” (Wheaton 1866, p. 22 n. 8). He echoed Wheaton’s belief in the immanent morality of Christianity, Western civilization, and the “circle of like-minded states bound by the common tradition of culture, law and morals” (Janis 1992, pp. 60, 37). Wheaton believed that international law congealed around universal and consent-based principles of obligation (Bederman 2008, p. 11), but he remained “overwhelmingly committed to states as the sole subjects of international law (Sellers 2008, p. 15), making the diplomatic practice, of European states, in effect the standard of civilization.” Formalism’s Story, As More Deeply Told

But formalism’s rise in the United States also traces from two colonial accelerants that were introduced during the Spanish conquest of the New World:

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the discovery doctrine, which applied to a newfound territory through the Christianized claim of title by conquest, and uti possidetis, which allowed Latin American republics to claim as their own borders the territorial frontiers from which the Spanish empire had retreated in its imperial demise. Both principles applied Eurocentric ideals that were neither universally understood nor applied and were more parochial than international (Roberts 2017). Nevertheless, these principles provided the imaginary template that projected European rulership into the unrestricted land space of the New World. Before it imploded, the Spanish empire employed imaginary lines throughout the Americas to set up its viceroyalty system. This system administered territory, controlled peoples, and extracted gold and silver over the course of Spain’s 300-year colonial rule over the Americas. The imaginary lines of the Spanish viceroyalties cut across unexplored deserts such as the Sonora and the Atacama, the Amazon jungle, the Andes Mountains, and the extended grasslands of the Pampas. With Euclidean simplicity, this line-drawing technique came to shape the emerging state system in the Americas. Uti possidetis would transpose into a simple line-drawing technique to facilitate the Euclidean architecture of post-imperial state-building. It was the immanent principle employed by newborn Latin American republics to define borders to territories following the retreat of Spanish metropolitan rule (1810–1824). Its application intended to avoid border conflicts by removing uncertainty about frontiers that otherwise could be described as terra nullius. Uti possidetis meant to foreclose even the possibility that gaps in the sovereign state system could appear. It provided a solution to the epochal change of the international system. Problems of a human, even continental dimension, seemed to admit to simple administration through the application of this principle. Noted for its administrative efficiency but blunt indifference to human populations, it would quickly come to signify international law’s close relationship with colonialism. Both the discovery doctrine and uti possidetis sprang from an immanent belief in the civilizing completeness of Christianity. It was on such flawed post-imperial foundation that the American idea of formalism formed. The International Slave Trade

The United States outlawed the international slave trade on January 1, 1808, (Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves), ending a practice that was lawful in this part of the New World for nearly 200 years. This outlawry marked “the first time in history that a slaveholding society voluntarily ceased to import new slaves” (Finkelman 2015, p. 133). The termination of the African trade was “the most successful antislavery action of the founding generation at

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the national level” (p. 133). Yet, it contrasted sharply with the institution of slavery itself, which remained legal in the United States until 1865 (13th Amendment to the Constitution) and elsewhere in the New World until 1888 (Brazil’s Golden Law abolition decree) (Marx 2012, p. 55; Drescher 1988, p. 429). It also contrasted with pro-slavery legislation in the United States dealing with runaway slaves and in its Northwest Territory following the adoption of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787. Most glaringly, it conflicted with Thomas Jefferson’s “Empire of Liberty” (Jefferson Letter to Clark 1780; Jefferson Letter to Madison 1809). Jefferson had a personal and lifelong desire to avoid the problem of slavery in light of his “profound negrophobia” (Finkelman 2015, p. 134). This failing extended to other slaveholding defenders of American republican virtue. A litany of slave cases reached the Marshall and Taney Supreme Courts between 1801 to 1864 and not one was “decided in support of a freedom suit” (Finkelman 2018, p. 220). Even one of the giant judicial minds of the antebellum age, Justice Joseph Story (Schwartz 1995, p. 99; Hoeflich 1985, p. 56)—who never owned a slave (Chief Justice Marshall, however, owned hundreds during his life) (John Marshall Center 2021), and who professed open hostility toward the institution—penned the majority opinion in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), which “made every [B]lack in the North, even if born free, vulnerable to being seized as a fugitive slave without any due-process hearing” (Finkelman 2018, p. 7). This decision “was as proslavery as anything Chief Justice Taney would conjure up in the Dred Scott case [1857] (p. 4),” which held that all people of African descent, free or slave, were not United States citizens and that all slaves were the legal property of their owner. Formalism helped to subordinate the tensions ingrained in Story’s conflicted views. The overriding pragmatic challenge of the Constitution was to establish a union to replace the loose and dysfunctional Confederation of States. However, the issue of representation between large and small states had bedeviled the seven-week Constitutional Convention of 1787. Large states argued that seats in the government should be apportioned proportionally; small states argued that they should be apportioned equally. By a one-vote margin, the delegates agreed to the so-called Great Compromise, which established the two houses of government, the proportionally based seats in the House of Representatives and the equally apportioned seats in the Senate. Much of this debate had to do with finances and national defense. However, the unifying document also adopted multiple pro-slavery concessions in order to form a less-than-perfect union—but a union nonetheless. Constitutional protections of slavery included the three-fifths clause (art. 1, § 2, cl 3), which increased the population count of southern states for purposes of enhancing Congressional representation; the Electoral College (art. 2, § 1, cl 2.), which also bolstered southern representation in Congress and affected direct tax obligations incentivizing southern state ratification

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of the Constitution; the slave-trade clause (art 1, § 9, cl 1), which prohibited suspension of the international slave trade until 1808, providing time for the South to grow its population; the aforementioned fugitive slave clause, the subject of the Prigg case (art. 4, § 2, cl 3); and the South’s veto power over amending these provisions (art. 5). Although textually silent on the topic of slavery until the 13th Amendment (Finkelman 2012, p. 105), these pro-slavery Constitutional provisions contributed to the Supreme Court’s problematic application of a single legal principle to the subject of slavery, and perhaps to Story’s inability to reconcile the gap between the United States’ international and domestic practices on slavery. Unable to close the normative Constitutional gap, Story’s voice on Marshall’s bench eventually fell silent on bondage cases argued before the Supreme Court. Interdiction and Return

Tensions also surfaced regarding the consequences of the international slave trade. In 1819, Congress granted the president the authority to return captives illegally brought to the United States to Africa (Slave Trade Act). The motivation for this legislation is traced in part to the Abolitionist movement and in part due to the American Colonization Society’s campaign to return illegally imported Africans to places such as (soon-to-become) Liberia (Burin 2012, p. 2). A latent tension separated the interests of these two movements, as the intentions of the American Colonization Society could also be construed as an act of removal, not of the institution of slavery itself, but rather of free Blacks back to Africa. The slave owner, Francis Scott Key, who penned the poem that would become the lyrics to the nation’s national anthem (The Star-Spangled Banner 36 U.S.C. § 301), helped to establish the American Colonization Society, which ultimately returned about 13,000 Africans to Africa’s West Coast (Marshall headed the Society’s Richmond chapter in 1823) (John Marshall Center). Key conceived of removing free African descendants as a broad solution to the intractable problem (Leepson 2014) of slavery’s historical accumulation of grievances. White anxieties of a large-scale slave rebellion had grown in view of Haiti’s successful slave rebellion against France (1791– 1804). American resentment also had festered over the Royal Navy’s renewal during the War of 1812 of its Corps of Colonial Marines, which attracted as many as 4,000 Blacks to fight against the United States in exchange for freedom and land after the war (NPS). Forced conscription (impressment) of American sailors into the Royal Navy had been a major cause of the War of 1812; the voluntary supplementation of Royal Navy recruitment efforts by Blacks only served to stir American racial passions. Though Key’s poem memorialized the “land of the free,” its third verse cast suspicions of allegiance against the “hireling and slave,” who with “foul footsteps” ran

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toward the promised freedom of British attackers while trying to escape American bondage during the bombardment of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry. The interdiction of foreign slave vessels also foretold problems associated with applying a single appropriate principle to implement the Slave Trade Act. Most of the interdiction cases reaching the Supreme Court involved technical questions of when or where a voyage began or what kind of proof was necessary to convict a trader (Finkelman 2012, p. 122). Even here, the irony of the Supreme Court’s four slaveholding justices (of six on the bench at that time) presiding over the disposition of human cargo questions complicated the appearance of dispassionate application of judge-made law (Bryant 2015). Several interdiction cases further exposed the fundamental tensions relating to formalism’s development. In the case of the U.S. v. Schooner Amistad (1841), the Supreme Court recognized that Native-born Africans afloat on a Spanish vessel found in United States waters off the coast of Long Island, New York, had been kidnapped and enslaved in violation of the laws of Spain. The Africans had taken control of the ship and had killed its captain and cook. The mutineers were set free, in large part due to the advocacy of former President John Quincy Adams, who was enlisted to represent the captives before the Supreme Court. Adams eschewed an appeal to external natural law, noting of no other law, statute, constitution, code, or treaty “applicable to the proceedings except that law” deriving from within the ethos of America’s Declaration of Independence (Argument of John Quincy Adams). Similarly, in the United States v. La Jeune Eugenie (1822), Justice Story, riding circuit in Massachusetts, upheld as valid the search and seizure of a French slave vessel disguised as a trader in palm oil. He wrote that the slave trade aggregated “accumulated wrongs” that could hardly be consistent with the Law of Nations. Story assessed the foreign slave trade’s legal status in federal Court according to a unitary connection between domestic and international law. He found a rationally deducible condemnation of the trade that nevertheless implicitly recognized the sensitive political nature of the judgment—he allowed the slave vessel to be returned to the French rather than be condemned and sold to support the prohibition of the practice. In The Antelope (1825), however, Chief Justice Marshall foreshadowed a more material construction of formalism and its rise by drawing a “sharp contrast between the jurist and the moralist” (Levinson 1997, p. 95). Story silently concurred with what Finkelman described as Marshall’s “dressing down [of] his closest colleague on the Court for arguing [in La Jeune Eugenie] that the trade violated” natural law and the Law of Nations (Finkelman 2018, p. 129). Marshall’s decision, drawing from the strong interest to demonstrate respect for freedom of the seas and the country’s burgeoning seaborne interests, upheld the obligation to recognize the rights of other nations to engage in the slave trade.

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The Antelope had set sail under the American flag from Baltimore in 1819; however, it switched flags at sea after it was captured by pirates. It then proceeded to plunder ships off the coast of West Africa, picking up slaves along the way. It later commingled, and consolidated human cargo claimed by Spain and Portugal and was eventually intercepted by a United States revenue cutter and taken to the port of Savannah, where a threeway dispute arose among Spain, Portugal, and the United States over the custody of the Africans. Chief Justice Marshall noted how “abhorrent” the slave trade was, even opining “[t]hat it is contrary to the law of nature … [because] every man has a natural right to the fruits of his own labor” (The Antelope, 120). Yet he recognized “it has been sanctioned … by the laws of nations [as a] ‘common commercial business … from long usage and general acquiescence’ and also as a right of conquest established by the customs and usages of war” (pp. 115, 120). Although he denounced slavery and the international slave trade “as violative of natural rights, natural law, and Christian morality (Levinson, p. 95),” he cautioned that the “Court must not yield to feelings which might seduce it from the path of duty, and must obey the mandate of the law” (The Antelope, p. 114). Marshall wrote: “Whatever might be the answer of a moralist to this question [regarding the legality of the slave trade], a jurist must search for its legal solution … [and make] resort to this standard as the test of international law” (p. 121). Marshall treated the 258 Africans aboard the ship as commercial property and a rough, pro-rated formula eventually divided the lot of Africans. The Court determined that the captives claimed by non-United States nations were slaves. Africans placed in the custody of the United States were returned to Africa; others were sold to American slave owners with proceeds remitted to the Spanish and Portuguese to cover their losses (Bryant 2015). Importantly, Story’s approach in La Jeune Eugenie seemed to keep one eye squarely on the nation’s relations with an important ally, France (by returning the slave vessel to France), whereas Marshall’s approach in The Antelope kept one eye squarely on not upsetting southern slaveholding sensibilities (by pro-rating a solution). In both cases, formalism’s contradictions with republican virtue exposed a concern for material interests. Indian Removal

The campaign against Natives, stimulated in part by the 1829 discovery of gold in Cherokee country (Georgia) (Williams 1993), resulted in the Indian Removal Act (1830), which displaced Natives of the five autonomous Gulf and southern republics—the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Cherokee, and the Seminole (along with the Biloxi, Catawba, Chitimacha, Coushatta, Miccosukee, and Tunica)—to land west of the Mississippi River (Treuer 2013, p. 76). The U.S. Army became the principal enforcer of federal Indian

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policy. By the 1840s, the army had successfully cleared the bulk of the eastern portion of the country. The Western frontier force then undertook regional defensive postures along the Western trails. After the Civil War, conflicts with Natives broke out across the Great Plains. Although engaged in Indian fighting, the army began to transpose into a multipurpose service industry in support of expansionist policies and commercial and communication interests (Tate 1999). Politically, the removal campaign represented the substitution of the “age of military conquest” by the succeeding “age of economic absorption”—where “the long rifle of the frontiersman was displaced by the [metaphoric long rifles of] legislative enactment … court decree … and the lease, mortgage, and deed of the land shark” (Debo 1940, preface). Between 1814 and 1858, the removal campaign spread Trails of Tears across the closing of the American frontier while massively redistributing Native homelands. In one 14-year period beginning in 1850 “nearly the entire west coast of the United States transferred from Indian to American hands” (Treuer, p. 18). A shading of formalism’s connection to economic expansion appeared in the seventeenth century, when England’s Charles II rescinded, in 1680, his Carolinas land grant of 1629 and converted it into a proprietary land charter to stimulate migratory land speculation and revenue collection through land sales (Miller 2011, 21). The King’s Bench already had established the Common law principle of birthright citizenship (jus soli) in Calvin’s Case (1608). This principle attached citizenship to the place where a person was born, rather than to the bloodline of the mother (jus sanguinis). Birthright citizenship became an important feature for inheriting land, passing it to offspring (postnati), and attracting immigrants to the New World. However, the English use of jus soli worked to establish the presumption of English superior rights over the Native Americans (Williams 1990, p. 204). It set off a long string of disputes based on the discovery doctrine and conquest that increasingly diminished aboriginal space and entitlement. Part of this reasoning rested on the diminished capacity of Natives, commonly referred to as “savages,” to engage in relations with Christians (perpetui inimici), and part of this reasoning asserted that Natives only occupied their domain as tenants at will as they never actually settled, encumbered, cleared, or improved the land. There is a double irony here. Native peoples of North America, bearers of the originary claim of jus soli, were deprived of their basic entitlement by the formalistic European imaginary. Moreover, some tribal groups actually tried to assimilate and adopt Western ways (Treuer, p. 84). For instance, the Eastern Cherokee had converted toward agrarianism during the Monroe presidency (1817–1825). They accepted missionary schools, developed their own alphabet in 1821, a remarkable syllabary designed by Sequoyah (Miller, p. 172), openly adapted European conventions and dress,

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converted matrilineal clan-based decision-making into representative councils and Constitutional government, established newspapers, a diplomatic corps, and even developed forced labor plantations (Treuer, pp. 76–85). These efforts earned them a measure of acceptance as a Civilized Tribe, until material interests in frontier land accumulation and expansion necessitated the manipulation of the jus soli principle to bring about their removal. In 1831, the state of Georgia pressed its claim of superior rights over Natives when its land surveyors entered Cherokee territory. The Cherokee brought suit before the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice Marshall denied them relief because the suit was improperly brought as that of a foreign nation, when, the Natives, “more correctly,” were determined to be “domestic dependent nations … in a state of pupilage;” where “their relations to the United States resemble that of a ward to his guardian” (Cherokee Nation v. The State of Georgia, p. 2). The designation of Native peoples as domestic dependents modified early American practice. From 1774 until about 1832, treaties established land holdings, entitlements, and borders between individual sovereign American Nations and the United States government (American Indian Treaties). Between 1778 and 1833, special commissioners acting for the Continental Congress, the Congress of the Confederation, and the United States President, under the supervision of the Secretary of War, negotiated 374 treaties with Native tribes. The form and procedures for putting them into effect were the same as for foreign nations (Ratified Indian Treaties, p. 1). After the Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War, waning metropolitan control over the northern Ohio Valley (territory east of the Mississippi River) and over Spanish Florida began to stimulate colonists’ interest over the southeastern territory. Frontier ventures over the Appalachian Mountains, originally prohibited by the British, turned into a tide of American expansionism fomented by the myth of exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny. This expansion conflicted with this burgeoning array of treaty obligations. Ultimately, as historian Greg Grandin has concluded, “[t]here was not problem caused by expansion that couldn’t be solved by more expansion” across this great land space (Grandin 2019, p. 270). To nominalize the meaning of such obligations, Chief Justice Marshall imparted overriding legal significance to the discovery doctrine in the landmark Supreme Court case, Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823). Marshall wrote that the Piankeshaw and Illinois Natives had no capacity to sell their land to private eastern land speculators in part because they were “fierce savages … whose subsistence was drawn chiefly from the forest,” and because, in Lockean terms, they did not “improve the land” but “[left] the country a wilderness” (Johnson v. M’Intosh, p. 590). The Court ruled that Natives never possessed a fee title to convey, despite a sovereign real property interest secured by parchment, as they essentially only secured an “occupancy”

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interest in their land (p. 574). Marshall reasoned that they lost the right of alienability (the right to sell their land possession) as a legal consequence of discovery by colonizing European sovereigns. Proper title was subsequently passed by conquest or purchase from the English Crown to the rightful holders of American land titles. Marshall’s formalistic reasoning asserted that this fundamental rule was deduced from conquest and the Law of Nations: However extravagant the pretension of converting the discovery of an inhabited country into conquest may appear, if the principle has been asserted in the first instance, and afterwards sustained; if a country has been acquired and held under it; if the property of the great mass of the community originates in it, it becomes the law of the land, and cannot be questioned. (p. 590) Kathleen Birrell reduced Marshall’s simulacrum for formalism to a basic proposition: “The law could not dispute, and must therefore uphold, the means of its own foundation” (Birrell 2016, p. 148). The rationale for Marshall’s decision had been laid out in an 1822 Indian Commission report by Jedidiah Morse to the Madison Administration (Morse 1822). The European settlers’ right to appropriate aboriginal land was based on the Natives’ “qualified” occupancy of the land, which provided “no power to convey” or own. The report held that “[t]he right of soil, or the absolute property, belong[ed] to the Sovereign, or State under whose authority the discovery and settlement were made.” The right of soil subsequently passed and “vested in the states of this Union” (p. 279). The ruling in M’Intosh contrasted with Marshall’s rationale in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), indicating, again, the early ambivalence associated with formalism, and perhaps Marshall’s inability to foresee the advancing claims of southeastern states as the rightful originary holders of the title that had passed from the Crown. In Worcester, the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Georgia could not impose licensing laws on white Christian missionaries residing in Cherokee territory in Georgia. The state had attempted through this licensing law to stop sympathizers from associating with the Cherokee Nation, which the Court ruled violated the Constitutional provision that granted Congress the authority to regulate commerce with Natives. Georgia officials, interpreting the transition of sovereignty from the Crown to the states, relied on the rationale of M’Intosh to claim priority rights over the federal government. Citing the Swiss authority on the Law of Nations, Emmerich de Vattel (1714–1767), Marshall retorted that “Tributary and feudatory states … do not thereby cease to be sovereign and independent states” simply by associating with a stronger power (Worcester v. Georgia, pp. 559, 561). “[T]he Indian nations had always been considered as “distinct,

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independent political communities, retaining their original natural rights as the undisputed possessors of the soil” (p. 559). Marshall’s opinion in Worcester seemingly pared back the formalistic states’ rights implications of his earlier opinion in M’Intosh, given South Carolina’s attempt to nullify as unconstitutional the federal government’s tariff authority over states (Nullification Crisis of 1828 and 1832). Slaves, Indians, and America’s Emerging Foreign Posture

The United States struggled to uphold revolutionary ideals in its early nineteenth-century engagement with the international slave trade and the competing sovereign claims of Native republics. Constitutional flaws in support of slavery and early engagement with original and treaty-based claims of Natives exposed latent contradictions that would persist throughout the nineteenth century. With regard to the international slave trade, the American judicial interpretation of the Law of Nations accommodated a foreign policy sensibility that promoted an international presence for the new country, but not at the expense of upsetting a complicated balance of power among seafaring nations. A confusing if not irreconcilable recognition of regional slave practices in the South, which was at the core of the southern region’s economy, had to be accommodated in view of the outlawry of international slave trading, even as imperfectly practiced along the Atlantic hemispheric seaboard. Internal rationalizations produced formalistic legal principles that supported pro-slavery provisions of the Constitution while imperfectly chipping away at the international slave trade. With regard to Indian removal, the juridical mindset of formalism preferenced notions of land improvement over the interests of those indigenous peoples born to the soil. It deeded sovereign title to those Christian discoverers who fenced-in land and made improvements over the mere nomadic tenancy interests of Natives. Formalism upheld the “extravagant pretension” that an inhabited land could be discovered because (as Marshall implied in M’Intosh) the proprietary interests of the greater masses now depended on upholding the proposition. These were the immanent constructs to which American judges resorted to minimizing the gaps associated with upholding republican virtue against two early challenges. The attempt to seamlessly apply immanent, self-contained principles to these historical circumstances contributed to the country’s ambivalent engagement with international society throughout the nineteenth century. The professionalization of the legal craft and legal education, the arrival of hardened formalistic pedagogies and practices through the use of treatises and case studies, the advent of a new breed of internationalists, and the arrival of a purported Golden Age of international law, contributed to an emboldened foreign policy posture for America at the century’s end. Formalism would

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project a secure and mature means of harmonizing the interests and ideals of the country in its fin de siècle emergence as a world power, never fully coming to terms with the shortcomings of its own exposition or the two seminal events of the international slave trade and Indian removal. Legal formalism amplified the newborn republic’s sense of social status among the “civilized” nations of the world at a time when international legal practice and international institutions were gaining strength and reputational status. It would support the country’s sense of destiny in terms of closing its frontier and engaging its seaward interests. It would also support the more assertive aspects of United States foreign policy, which vacillated between themes of unilateralism and universalism, isolation and engagement, and international society and international community. References Abel, R.L. (1986). The transformation of the American legal profession. Law and Society Review, 20(1), 7–18. Abrams, I. (1957). The emergence of the international law societies. The Review of Politics, 19(3), 361–380. Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, 2 Stat. 426 (1807), Public Law, 9–22 (taking effect January 1, 1808). Allott, P. Comments on Jean D’Aspremont, formalism and the sources of international law: A theory of the ascertainment of legal rules. EJIL: Talk! (2012, December 12). Retrieved from the EJIL website: https://www​.ejiltalk​.org ​/comments​-on​ -jean​-daspremont​-formalism​-and​-the​-sources​-of- inter​natio​nal-l​aw-a-​theor​y-of-​ the-a​scert​ainme​nt-of​-lega​l-rul​es/. American Indian Treaties, Native American Heritage. (2022, June 22). National Archives. Retrieved from the National Archives website: https://www​.archives​ .gov​/research ​/native​-americans​/treaties. Argument of John Quincy Adams, before the Supreme Court of the United States: In the case of the United States, Appellants, vs. Cinque, and Others, Africans, Captured in the Schooner Amistad, by Lieut. Gedney 1841. (1841). Avalon Project. Retrieved from the Avalon Project website: https://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu​ /19th​_ century​/amistad​_ 002​.asp. Austin, J. (1832). The province of jurisprudence determined. London: John Murray. Bederman, D.J. (2008). Intellectual genealogies. International Legal Theory, 6(1), 9–11. Bingham, T. (2005). The Alabama claims arbitration. International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 54(1), 1–25. Birrell, K. (2016). Indigeneity: Before and beyond the law. New York: Routledge. Bryant, A.C. (2001). Reading the law in the office of Calvin Fletcher: The apprenticeship system and the practice of law in fontier Indiana. Nevada Law Journal, 1, 19–37. Bryant, J.M. (2015). Dark places of the earth: The voyage of the slave ship Antelope. New York: W.W. Norton.

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Burin, E. (2012). The Slave Trade Act of 1819: A new look at colonization and the politics of slavery. American Nineteenth Century History, 13(1), 1–14. Calvin’s Case. (1608). 77 ER 377. Cherokee Nation v. The State of Georgia. (1831). 30 US (5 Pet.) 1. Cook, W.W. (1927). Scientific method and the law. American Bar Association Journal, 13(6), 303–309. Debo, A. (1940). And still the waters run: The betrayal of the five civilized tribes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dred Scott v. Sandford. (1857). 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393. Drescher, S. (1988). Brazilian abolition in comparative perspective. The Hispanic American Historical Review, 68(3), 429–460. Duxbury, N. (1995). Patterns of American jurisprudence. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Finkelman, P. (2018). Supreme injustice: Slavery in the nation’s highest court. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Finkelman, P. (2015). Slavery and the founders: Race and liberty in the age of Jefferson. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge. Finkelman, P. (2012). Slavery in the United States: Persons or property? In J. Allain (Ed.), The legal understanding of slavery: From the historical to the contemporary, 105–134. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Funk, K., & Mullen, L. (2018). The spine of American law: Digital text analysis and U.S. legal practice. American Historical Review, 123(1), 132–164. Goetsch, C.C. (1980). The future of legal formalism. American Journal of Legal History, 24(3), 221–256. Grandin, G. (2019). The end of the myth: From the frontier to the border wall in the mind of America. New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company. Hathaway, O.A., & Shapiro, S. J. (2017). The internationalists: How a radical plan to outlaw war remade the world. New York: Simon & Schuster. Hoeflich, M.H. (1985). John Austin and Joseph Story: Two nineteenth century perspectives on the utility of the civil law for the common lawyer. American Journal of Legal History, 29(1), 36–77. Horwitz, M.J. (1977). The transformation of American law, 1780–1860. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Indian Removal Act. (1830). 4 Stat. 411, Pub. L. 21–148. Janis, M.W. (1992). American versions of the international law of Christendom: Kent, Wheaton and the Grotian tradition. Netherlands International Law Review, 39, 7–61. Jefferson, T. (1780). Letter to George Rogers Clark, 25 December 1780. Founders Online, National Archives. Retrieved from the National Archives website: https://founders​.archives​.gov​/documents​/ Jefferson ​/01​- 04 ​- 02​- 0295. Jefferson, T. (1809). Letter to James Madison, 27 April 1809. Founders Online, National Archives. Retrieved from the National Archives website: https:// founders​.archives​.gov​/documents​/ Jefferson ​/03 ​- 01​- 02​- 0140. John Marshall Center for Constitutional History and Civics. (2021). ht t ps: //joh n ma rsha l lcenter ​ . org ​ / joh n ​ - ma rsha l l ​ - a nd ​ - slaver y/#:~ ​ : tex t ​ = Over​%20the​%20course​%20of​%20his​,properties​%20likely​%20neared​%20200​ %20individuals. Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. M’Intosh. (1823). 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543. Key, F.S. (1814). Defence of Fort McHenry [The Star-Spangled Banner].

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Koskenniemi, M. (2002). The gentle civilizer of nations–The rise and fall of international law 1870–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Langdell, C.C. (1871). Selection of cases on the law of contracts. Boston: Little Brown & Company. Leepson, M. (2014). What so proudly we hailed: Francis Scott Key, a life. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Leiter, B. (2010). Legal formalism and legal realism: What is the issue? Legal Theory, 16(2), 111–133. Levinson, S. (1997). Slavery in the canon of constitutional law. In P. Finkelman (Ed.), Slavery and the law, 89–112. Indianapolis: Madison House Publishers, Inc. Lindell, Y. (2012–2013). A science like any other? Classical legal formalism in the Halakhic jurisprudence of rabbis Isaac Jacob Reines and Moses Avigdor Amiel. Journal of Law and Religion, 28, 179–224. Liu, L.H. (2012). Henry Wheaton (1785–1848). In B. Fassbender & A. Peters (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of the history of international law, 1132–1136. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Madsen, M.R. (2004). Book review: The gentle civilizer of nations [Review of the book The gentle civilizer of nations–The rise and fall of international law 1870– 1960, by M. Koskenniemi]. Acta Sociologica, 47(1), 105–107. Marx, A.W. (2012). The making of race and nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa, and Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McHugh, P. (2004). Aboriginal societies and the common law: A history of sovereignty, states, and self-determination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Miller, D.W. (2011). The taking of American Indian lands in the Southeast: A history of territorial cessions and forced relocations, 1607–1840. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Company Inc., Publishers. Moore, J.W. (2002). Remaking work, remakings Space: Spaces of production and accumulation in the reconstruction of American capitalism, 1865–1920. Antipode, 34(2), 176–204. Morse, J. (1822). A Report to the Secretary of War of the United States on Indian Affairs, comprising a narrative of a tour performed in the summer of 1820 under a commission from the President of the United States, for the purpose of ascertaining, for the use of the government, the actual state of the Indian tribes in our country. New Haven: Printed by S. Converse. Nelson, W.E. (1975). Judge Weinfeld and the adjudicatory process: A law finder in an age of judicial lawmakers. New York University Law Review, 50, 980–1007. North American Review. (1866). The present aspect of international law, review of Elements of International Law. Eighth edition, edited, with notes, by Richard Henry Dana. North American Review, 103(213), 466–498. Onuf, N. (2008). Henry Wheaton and “The golden age of international law.” International Legal Theory, 6(1), 2–9. Overholser, J.C. (1993). Elements of the Socratic method: I. Systematic questioning. Psychotherapy, 30(1), 67–74. Posner, R.A. (1986–1987). Legal formalism, legal realism, and the interpretation of statutes and the constitution. Case Western Reserve Law Review, 37(2), 179–217. Prigg v. Pennsylvania. (1842), 41 U.S. (16 Pet.) 539.

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Ratified Indian Treaties 1722–1869. (1973). National Archives Microfilm Publications. Retrieved from the National Archives website: https://www​ .archives​.gov​/files​/research​/microfilm ​/m668​.pdf. Roberts, A. (2017). Is international law international? Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Rossi, C.R. (1993). Equity and international law: A legal realist approach to international decisionmaking. Irvington: Transnational Publishers, Inc. Schwartz, B. (1995). Supreme Court superstars: The ten greatest justices. Tulsa Law Journal, 31(1), 93–159. Sellers, M. (2008). The elements of international law. International Legal Theory, 6(1), 11–15. Slave Trade Act. (1919). The Act in Addition, ch.101, 3 Stat. 532. Speziale, M. (1980). Langdell’s concept of law as science: The beginning of antiformalism in American legal theory. Vermont Law Review, 5, 1–37. Stampp, K. (1956). The peculiar institution: Slavery in the ante-bellum South. New York: Knopf. Star-Spangled Banner. (1931). 36 U.S.C. § 301. The Antelope. (1825). 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 66. Tate, M.L. (1999). The frontier army in the settlement of the West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Treuer, A. (2013). Atlas of Indian nations. Washington, DC: National Geographic. United States v. La Jeune Eugenie. (1822). 26 F. Cas. 832 (C.C. D. Mass. 1822) (No. 15,551). United States v. Schooner Amistad. (1841). 40 U.S. 518. Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society (G. Roth & C. Wittich, Eds.). New York: Bedminster Press. Weinrib, E.J. (1988). Legal formalism: On the immanent rationality of law. Yale Law Journal, 97(6), 949–1016. Wheaton, H. (1866). Elements of international law. 8th ed. (R.H. Dana, Jr., Ed.). Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. Williams, D. (1993). The Georgia gold rush: Twenty-Niners, Cherokees, and gold fever. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Williams Jr. R.A. (1990). The American Indian in western legal thought: The discourses of conquest. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Worcester v. The State of Georgia. (1832). 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515.

7 THE UNITED STATES INSIDE “BRITISH INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY,” 1838–1860 Imperial Rivalries and Compatibilities Daniel M. Green

This chapter situates the United States in a particular context in the history of international society, that of a “British International Society” (BIS). This was a period of British global predominance. Towards Europe, Britain operated a balance system with four to five other powers, but outside Europe, Britain successfully propagated its own version of an international society, guided by the principles of free trade, anti-slavery, and non-territorialist informal empire. This was, with fluctuations, roughly during the years 1820–1865. Key aspects of U.S. national politics and, certainly, foreign policy took shape within this period, largely in response to BIS pressures. From 1838 to 1860, the United States was aggressively pro-slavery, participated in the slave trade, and stubbornly embarked on a massive territorial expansion, becoming a rising regional power, all in defiance of BIS pressures. But the United States also embraced free trade and informal empire at times, in ways that bolstered the British project, earned approval and cooperation, and shaped hemispheric conditions to today. The chapter lays out the key features of the BIS and looks at U.S. behavior within it. British International Society, 1820–1865

Great powers, the greater their power advantage, achieve security and then have the luxury of pursuing more ideological goals. Britain had the predominance of global power in the first half of the nineteenth century, so it could attempt to export its values to the world and it did. British international society advanced four main policy preferences: (1) it was anti-slavery and especially against the slave trade, (2) it was highly enthused about free trade as an engine of peace and progress and as a panacea for many ills, (3) DOI: 10.4324/9781003334927-7

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it did not favor territorial conquest abroad for itself or others, in a policy of “non-territorialism” (Go 2011), and (4) it sought hegemony outside Europe, but occasionally resorted to regional balancing to reinforce Britain’s control over outcomes. After 1800 Britain followed a “trade not rule” theme, established bases and enclaves in key chokepoints of global commerce to keep trade lanes open, became active in suppressing the global slave trade and regional piracies, and backed the United States in the 1823 Monroe Doctrine to prevent the recolonization of Latin America. By the 1820s, the BIS was evident, and it strengthened substantially after 1830. Nineteenth-century British hegemony outside Europe materialized thanks to the Continental isolation of France by 1805 (after the Trafalgar naval battle) and Spain’s loss of contact with her empire after 1808. The world was an open field for British power and policy preferences ranged against what remained of the old mercantilist system (O’Brien 2002). Indeed, Paul Kennedy (1989, 154–155) argues that Britain enjoyed an era without intense competition from 1815 to 1880, retaining competitive advantages in naval capacity and national finances in particular; Doyle (1986) uses the term “peripheral unipolarity” for 1815–1870. By some accounts, victory at Trafalgar, in fact, “effectively terminated naval warfare between great powers for more than a century” (O’Brien 2002, 16). This was the global power environment in which a British international society spread and had its impacts. It was fueled by liberal utilitarian reform ideas rising in Britain in the 1820s. In the 1830 parliamentary elections, reformist forces brought a liberal Whig government to power and enthusiasm for a host of liberal political and economic reforms, coinciding with the liberal Revolutions of 1830 in Europe. Parliament undertook its own reform in the Great Reform Act of 1832, widening the franchise and revising parliamentary districts. Faithful believers in an early liberal policy agenda came to power in Britain, with a combination of naiveté about their ability to change the world and the power to proceed globally. While Tories, Conservatives, Peelites, Whigs, and Radicals might have been hostile rivals on other grounds (the poor, military spending, electoral reform, Ireland), there was something of a consensus, for some time, on key international policy preferences, producing a British international society until 1865 at least. (Global power shifts in the 1860s altered Britain’s status and preferences.) As soon as the Whigs came to power, reforms began and were promoted abroad. A free trade mission was sent to proselytize in France for much of 1831–1834 and had more success in 1835–1840, in missions to Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, and Germany (Todd 2008). After the Reform Act of 1832 almost doubled U.K. voter rolls, an election brought an even more reformist parliament in January 1833, willing to take the momentous step of ending slavery (Temperley 1972, 16–17), as the activist mood shifted from “gradualism” to “immediatism.” The Emancipation Act of 1833 soon passed, ending slavery

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in the British West Indies on August 1, 1834 (Temperley 1972, 19). The free trade impulse also hit the British East India Company in 1833, when it was re-chartered and lost its monopoly on the India–China trade, opening opportunities for private traders in Asia. This trade took off and greatly increased flows of opium into China, leading directly to the incidents which sparked the First Opium War of 1840–1842 with China, and the forced opening of its economy. Britain had banned its own citizens and ships from the slave trade in 1807, but efforts to wipe out the trade accelerated markedly after 1830. Eighteen new mutual search treaties were signed between Britain and various countries in the years 1831–1841, including Denmark, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, and Spain. The anti-slave trade patrolling effort—sometimes occupying as much as one-quarter of the Royal Navy’s ships and funds— accompanied a belief in commercial expansion, free trade, and hopes for “legitimate trade.” Slavery should end everywhere so that legitimate commerce could take over and work its magic.1 Among the devout, faith in the benefits of free trade was extreme—it was a “grand panacea” for all problems (Hinde 1987, 171), able to pull humanity to civilization, morality, and sensibility the way gravity acted physically, without the need for any other intervention (Hyam 2002, 109–111). Underpinned by an early liberal belief in the “limitless malleability of human character” (Metcalf 1997, 33), it applied to peoples all over the world—in contrast to later Victorian skepticism about “racial” improvement—accordingly, formal colonialism was not needed. Free trade became a key principle within British international society, the “primum mobile of a system” of ambitious reformist ideas (MacDonagh 1962, 491). It could apply the pressure to eliminate slavery and the slave trade, make lands productive, increase economic prosperity, defuse international rivalries, promote peace among all, etc.—“the first step towards universal peace among nations” (Morgan 2009, 89). Since commerce was the best pioneer for civilization’s spread (Hyam 2002, 110; Stanley 1983), forcing a country to open up—as happened in these years—was what was best for it, even if it was resisted (e.g., Todd 2008, 393–394). The pace and locus of change varied. Free trade was spread abroad as opportunities arose. In 1838 Britain used the Treaty of Balta Liman to impose a tariff convention on Istanbul, which effectively made the entire Ottoman Empire into a free trade zone. Following the Opium War of 1840– 1842, five of China’s ports were open to merchants instead of one. Free trade for Britain itself came more slowly. In 1841, the new Peel government (1841–1846) announced its openness to repealing the protectionist Corn

1  A first step was high tariffs on slave-produced products from countries still permitting it.

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Laws of 1826, 2 and Peel slowly turned fully into a free trader, beginning liberalizations in the 1842 Budget and 1845 Budget (Jones and Rakestraw 1997). 1846 saw the final repeal of the Corn Laws, after years of effort and in 1849 the Navigation Acts were repealed, giving non-British shippers nearly free access to British harbors and cargoes. The BIS policy agenda remained consistent across time. After 1850, the slave trade to Brazil was largely suppressed, thanks to British pressure (Fladeland 1972, 338), and anti-slavery activists turned to Cuba’s trade and slave economy. London’s Great Exhibition of 1851 was to be a grand celebration of the prosperity generated by repeal of the Corn Laws, an advertisement for the new British civilization “to unite the world in peaceful commercial competition in order to supplant violent military confrontation” (Ashworth 2014, 71). British free trade missions also turned to East Asia from 1849 to 1859, working on trade liberalization in China, Siam, Japan, and the Dutch East Indies, sometimes with the help of British gunboats (Todd 2008, 290–296; Hyam 2002, 100). A key part of this formula has been called “non-territorialism” (Go 2011, 106–117): relative disinterest in new colonial territory and formal empire, a somewhat anti-imperial stance in which Britain was purposely not colonizing places and worked to prevent others from doing so as well (as in support for the Monroe Doctrine in 1823). It manifested in giving territory away, refusing to annex certain locales, and rejecting requests for British protectorate status (e.g., Cuba, Uruguay, Fiji) (Go 2011, 111–112; Porter 1975). Colonies abroad were viewed as expensive millstones (Iliasu 1971; Stanley 1983) that “cost more to administer than they were worth and would inevitably detach themselves from the mother country when they reached maturity” (Blake and Barck 1960, 256). Instead of conquest, this approach favored gradual cultural–civilizational conversion, giving missionaries an important role alongside British investors and merchants (Stanley 1983). Buttressing non-territorialism were cases in which Britain maintained regional power balances by preventing the dismemberment of a friendly country by allies and rivals. The classic example of this is the Ottoman Empire, but a similar pattern holds for Mexico, 1830–1860, and China for much of the century. Britain did not take any substantial territory for herself in these three cases, nor did she want others to. In this spirit, the forced opening of trade was not a ploy to destabilize as a prelude to dismemberment (though it could and did destabilize countries in varying ways). Countries agreeing to trade liberalization were given assistance with internal disorder, as in the Ottoman Empire against Egypt or Qing China against the Taiping Rebellion (Todd 2008, 392–393).

2  “Corn” was a collective term for wheat and several other grain crops.

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European free trade peaked with the 1860 Cobden–Chevalier Treaty liberalizing trade between Britain and France. In the next 6 years, France signed free trade agreements with 11 countries, Britain with 4. Cobden wrote in 1859 that free trade was becoming a litmus test in British foreign policy, a standard of political legitimacy (Howe 2007, 33). Finally, British International Society did not favor a balance of power system globally, as Britain did studiously in Europe. Britain did not consent to the use of the globe’s territorial assets to keep a European great power balance. The goal was hegemony for Britain outside of Europe, to control and determine outcomes around the world.3 The American Record of Resistance and Conformity to the BIS, 1838–1860

The American experience inside the BIS unfolded in three phases. The first was 1838–1846, in a rebellious reaction to an intensification of the BIS in 1838–1841. The United States locked horns with Britain over slavery, the slave trade, and westward expansion controversies (Texas, Oregon, California). Then, 1846–1852 saw some coexistence and cooperation, as the Oregon issue was resolved, a free trade breakthrough occurred, Britain acquiesced to U.S. expansion with the Mexican–American War, and the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty of 1850 took some territorial competition off the table. Finally, 1853–1860 saw renewed competition and aggression over slavery and the Caribbean, within new constraints laid down in the middle period. Rising Tensions, 1838–1846

Under the liberal Whig government of Melbourne and Palmerston (1835– 1841), Britain pursued an unusually ambitious anti-slavery and free trade agenda. The last gasp of slavery, the ending of the quasi-slavery “apprentice” system in the British West Indies in 1838, was celebrated by anti-slavery rallies around Britain (Temperley 1972, 62), but the next focus was going to be the United States. Speakers attacked American slavery and embarrassed the American minister in London as a slave breeder himself (1972, 64). A few months in late 1838 and early 1839 saw key organizational breakthroughs: the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) was founded to work for the global abolition of slavery, then the Anti-Corn Law League (ACLL), and then the British–India Society. The latter added to American

3  E xemplified in the war scare with France when it took control of a small island like Tahiti in 1843, as Pacific islands became coveted properties after China’s opening.

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slavey woes by encouraging the cultivation of cotton in India as an alternative to slave-grown cotton from the United States (Hinde 1987, 87). The First World Anti-Slavery Convention was in London in June 1840, organized by BFASS activists and attended by more than 500 delegates (Fladeland 1972, 269; Hinde 1987, 87), including many Americans. The focus of many of the discussions was new campaigns targeting the United States (Fladeland 1972, 269). The fate of Texas was another early object of the BIS. In 1838–1844, Britain preferred Texas independent and “free soil” and almost achieved this. Britain didn’t want California for itself, but not for the United States either, even as Mexico was falling apart internally. Texas independence from Mexico was recognized by European powers in 1839 over furious Mexican objections. The Texas slavery issue was debated on both sides of the Atlantic, with American abolitionists publicly calling on the British government to make sure Texas banned slavery (Fladeland 1972, 306). In 1840, Palmerston concluded a commercial treaty with Texas (Fladeland 1972, 306–307) which included a secret agreement that Texas would effectively prohibit the slave trade by allowing Britain the right of search on ships; he made this a sine qua non for ratification of any other treaties on trade or finance between Britain and Texas. Britain’s anti-slave trade efforts continued, and in late 1841, came the long-anticipated conclusion of the Quintuple Treaty against the trade at a meeting in London legalizing a mutual right of search amongst the signatories (Jones and Rakestraw 1997, 76). It classified the slave trade as piracy, with punishment to be decided by the country of origin of the perpetrator, and was initially signed by Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia—dubbed by new foreign minister Lord Aberdeen a “Holy Alliance.” Aberdeen invited the United States to sign and warned that if the United States declined, signatory nations would nonetheless be inspecting any likely slaving vessel, regardless of the colors flying. The same month the new Peel government initiated a program to liberalize food protectionism and trade on 750 other items (Hawkins 2009, 255–257). Unsurprisingly, there was a Southern/slave-interest discursive response to the British challenge, in what one historian has labeled “the new school of slavery extremists” (Merk 1972, 54). These included incoming officials of the U.S. government after 1840. One approach was to attack British emancipation as a grand deceptive charade, as in an 1835 article by future diplomatic envoy Duff Green which, as Temperley summarizes, cited Britain’s turn to free but indentured labor immigration as proof that Britain’s true purpose was not to improve the lot of the Negro but to increase her commerce and extend her power. If, as Britain claimed, indentured labour was cheaper than slave labour, that was only because

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it was less humane. West Indian emancipation … was nothing more than an elaborate subterfuge designed to persuade the United States, France, Spain, and Brazil to free their slaves and thereby ruin their economies. (Temperley 1972, 134) In 1839 Abel Upshur, future Secretary of the Navy and of State under Tyler, wrote a truly extremist article, nicely summarized by historian Frederick Merk (1972, 18) Slavery, Upshur wrote, is the normal state of the black man; it reflects an ordinance of God. Any attempt at emancipation would interfere with the laws of nature. Slavery is essential to the agriculture of the South and is the true foundation of Southern democracy. It has the great political value of giving Southern whites, however poor, a sense of superiority to the blacks. It creates a sense of white equality, dignity, and self-respect necessary to a true democracy. In April of 1841, John Tyler of Virginia became president when Harrison died after a month in office. Tyler represented the peak empowerment of Southern slave interests and had been enmeshed in slavery politics as head of Virginia’s Colonization Society (a program to settle free blacks in Africa). He brought into the cabinet and his inner circle a host of pro-slavery politicians who were also Anglophobes: Abel Upshur, Duff Green, Lewis Cass, Henry Wise, John C. Calhoun, and Caleb Cushing (Hietala 2003, 58–59). This band orchestrated a concerted counter-effort to the BIS from 1841 on. Indeed, “traditional” trans-Atlantic tensions and American Anglophobia are perhaps more accurately viewed as the result of vociferous Southern interests taking charge in these years. Territory and Trade: China and the American West, 1841–1843

The United States and Britain continued to clash over territorial questions, with Britain’s actions in the Opium War fanning the flames. Tensions had simmered over Oregon—jointly occupied according to a treaty of 1827—for a few years, but mildly, since it was lightly settled and Britain had only a minimal Hudson’s Bay Company presence. Britain, in light-touch informal fashion, was comfortable with an Oregon co-dominium and did not want Mexico to lose California either. But U.S. interest blossomed suddenly in 1841, as Britain was opening China’s trade: all eyes were now on the North American West. Mexico was highly indebted to British bondholders but, true to BIS principles, Britain did not seek to acquire territory there and indeed, was trying to hold Mexico together and save her from the United States (Merk 1966, 113). For example, in late 1841, London received word

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of a plan by “adventurers” to occupy Upper California (not securely held by Mexico), establish British sovereignty there, and seek British protection. Britain’s official response was to quash the proposal in a firm assertion of the wish “not to acquire additional colonial territory” (Hawkins 2009, 252). China undertook a suppression of the opium trade in 1838, and war began in early 1840 when, after struggles over the seizure of opium cargoes, British merchants were formally expelled from the trading compound at Canton. They retaliated with blockading, and for months in 1841–1842, a brigade of troops from India cruised the China coast, forcing the surrender of various towns. It concluded in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanking, in which Britain obtained the island of Hong Kong and four more treaty ports were opened in addition to Canton. The United States was watching, at times applauding, and licking its chops. In late 1841, John Quincy Adams gave a lecture on the Opium War at Harvard that made arguments paralleling Britain’s, that China deserved to be knocked down a peg since they did not follow international law in their interactions with other countries (Green 2019, 36–37): Their government is a hereditary patriarchal despotism, and their own exclusive interest is the measure of all their relations with the rest of mankind. Their own government is founded upon the principle that as a nation they are superior to the rest of mankind. Adams, demonstrating a shared liberal-imperialist sentiment, endorsed the British war and even hoped that Britain “would extend her liberating arm to the furthest bound of Asia” (2019, 37). The lecture created a buzz as Boston merchants became worried about the British securing special favors in the China trade (Bailey 1946, 322). As eyes turned to Asia and the Pacific, Abel Upshur’s 1841 Naval Report to Congress recommended a 50% increase in naval expenditures to double the Pacific squadron, establish a naval base in Hawaii, and triple the size of the marine corps (Hietala 2003, 57). In April 1842, the American minister in Mexico assured Washington that Mexico would be happy to “cede to us Texas and the Californias” to remedy its debt problems; the harbors of California would be a boon, securing for the United States “the trade of India & the whole Pacific Ocean. In addition to which California is destined to be the granary of the Pacific” (Remini 1997, 576). This linked with Daniel Webster’s “tripartite plan,” afoot throughout 1842, to accompany the Webster–Ashburton treaty (Remini 1997, 576). Webster and Tyler were trying to acquire Northern California in a tripartite deal that would give Britain “the Pacific Northwest as far south as the Columbia River in exchange for Britain paying Mexico for transferring Northern California and Texas to the United States” (Green 2019, 33). An unlikely scheme, it collapsed in October 1842 when an American naval commander rashly seized

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Monterrey temporarily and outraged Mexico (Jones and Rakestraw 1997, 180). Oregon, integral to the California and Pacific situations, needed resolving. In December 1842, a Senate bill called for “a line of forts” from the Missouri and Arkansas rivers to the mouth of the Columbia and “extension of US laws from the 42nd parallel to Russian America” (Jones and Rakestraw 1997, 177). The same month, after news of the Treaty of Nanking reached Washington, President Tyler’s annual message to Congress included an Asian theme (Blake and Barck 1960, 225). He requested funds for a special commissioner for China (Bailey 1946, 324), laid out an American open door policy for China and announced the Tyler Doctrine that Hawaii must be kept independent and not colonized, extending the Monroe Doctrine into the Pacific (Remini 1997, 579–580). This was timely, given that Hawaii was briefly seized by a British naval commander in 1843. Thus, regarding new opportunities in the Pacific the United States and Britain were on the same page, bolstering open trade and non-territorialism, though the United States now intently eyed westward expansion. Slavery evinced even less policy compatibility. The lobbying efforts of Lewis Cass, American ambassador in Paris, were stoking French resentment and delaying ratification of the Quintuple Treaty (Bailey 1946, 223). The 1842 Webster–Ashburton Treaty settled the Maine boundary dispute with Canada, but Britain insisted on a clause on the slave trade, stipulating that the United States would maintain a naval squadron on the African coast to assist the British navy against the trade. The United States disregarded this in the entire period to 1861 and “the scandal of slave traders using the American flag to cover their activities” continued (Blake and Barck 1960, 261). The U.S. Navy Department, where six of the nine Secretaries in these years were Southerners, altered orders to focus simply on protecting commerce, and in 1853 Southern congressmen got naval funding slashed (Jones and Rakestraw 1997, 142). The slavery question was entangled with freer trade, and Britain’s trade liberalization prospects—tariff reductions being on the table for 1842—were monitored in the United States. Northern interests noted that if tariffs dropped, the United States would export more food and be less reliant on cotton exports. The connections were highlighted again in 1843, when the British East India Company ended slavery in India, a move hailed by abolitionists as “a great step forward in … the replacement of American cotton by free-labor Indian cotton” (Fladeland 1972, 287); more reason for Britain to pursue the abolition of slavery by others. Trade, Slavery, and Informal Empire: The Texas Problem, 1843–1845

If there was a reinforcement of British international society in the Pacific, not so Texas, where slavery and Southern interests were so central, and yet,

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all the principles of the BIS were at stake. By early 1843 the Texan chargés in London and Washington were corresponding about arousing Southern fears of the looming disaster for the South if Texas became a free-soil republic under British protection (Temperley 1972, 200): The independence of Texas and the existence of Slavery in Texas is a question of life and death to the slave holding states of the American Union. Hemmed in between the free states on their northern border and a free Anglo-Saxon State on their southern border and sustained by England, their history would soon be written. Another fear t was that abolitionists wanted a free-soil Texas as a refuge for runaway slaves, like Canada (Merk 1972, 8–10). After firebrand Abel Upshur succeeded Daniel Webster as Secretary of State in mid-1843, President Tyler accelerated efforts to acquire Texas. To win the election again in 1844, he seized upon Texas and defied Britain as a cause to rally support across the political spectrum (Bailey 1946, 255). The House Committee on Foreign Affairs warned Britain “that [Texas] is exclusively an American question … with which England has nothing to do, and with which we would not suffer her to have anything to do” (Bailey 1946, 258). A first effort at passing a treaty to annex Texas came in April 1844, but its supporting documents leaked to the press, including an explosive letter by John C. Calhoun to the British minister in Washington explaining that annexation was a self-defense measure to protect the United States from British abolitionist policies (Blake and Barck 1960, 193; Merk 1966, 22); abolition would bring “the greatest calamity” to the whole country and especially to the Negro race itself (1960, 192–193). Calhoun’s pro-slavery framing doomed the treaty, for the moment (Jones and Rakestraw 1997, 188–189). Britain did not relent as annexation approached. PM Peel told Aberdeen: “I hope you are preparing the groundwork for the defiance of the United States in respect to Texian annexation” (Jones 1974, 36). Indeed, Aberdeen spent April–June 1844 pulling together his “Diplomatic Act,” arranging cooperation with France and Mexico to guarantee Texas independence and non-slavery status (Bailey 1946, 258; Jones 1974). Meanwhile, Calhoun rang alarm bells about Britain getting Texas: “There is not a vacant spot left on the globe, not excepting Cuba, to be seized by her, so well calculated to further the boundless schemes of her ambition and cupidity. If we should permit her to seize on it, we shall deserve the execration of posterity” (Bailey 1946, 254). After many complications, on March 1, 1845, the Texas treaty was signed by Tyler, one of his last acts in office (Bailey 1946, 257–258). Texas ratified it on July 4 and became a U.S. state. What does the annexation of Texas represent within the frame of British international society? First, it was a key victory of the United States over

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Britain and for slavery in the South. The global BIS faltered, weakened by Britain’s power shortcomings in the European arena and fear of French interests on the ground in Mexico. Second, contra British preferences, it put still more territory in play, as Texas was a gateway to further westward expansion, and its loss further enhanced the perception that Mexico was dying, a “sick man.” (Mexican internal instability marked it as a troubled failure by the standards of the time—“the Turkey of the New World” (Barker 1979, 117).) Texas had plans to extend to the Pacific, and Washington hastened to capitalize on this. Third, successful annexation fueled American “manifest destiny” ideas, a defiance of the BIS in territorial acquisitiveness and a strengthening counter to British global hegemony. Palmerston’s observations years later, in 1857, are telling: These Yankees are most disagreeable fellows to have to do with about any American Question; They are on the Spot, strong, deeply interested in the matter, totally unscrupulous and dishonest and determined somehow or other to carry their point. We are far away, weak from Distance, controuled by the Indifference of the Nation as to the Question discussed, and by its Strong commercial Interest in maintaining Peace with the United States. The result of this State of Things has been that we have given way Step by Step to the North Americans on almost every disputed matter. (Jones 1974, 160) James K. Polk, not Tyler, got the Democratic nomination in 1844 and was elected on the “54:40 or fight” slogan of maximalist claims for Oregon Territory. Many regarded the election “as a mandate from the American people to embrace the Lone Star Republic” (Bailey 1946, 257), so Tyler’s last-minute annexation reflected the national mood. The Democrats also stoked antagonism toward the British to capture nearly 100% of the Irish vote (Jones and Rakestraw 1997, 192). Yet, Polk also represented an opportunity for accord, surrounded as he was by Southern free traders while the Peel/Aberdeen government grew more free trading each day. A Tennessee slave-owner who brought slaves to the White House, Polk was avowedly expansionist and eyeing Oregon and Mexico, putting him at odds with the BIS. War with Britain over Oregon was possible, and Polk’s incendiary Inaugural Address prompted the London Times to express surprise that the United States would risk war with Britain when it was so close to hostilities with Mexico over Texas (Jones and Rakestraw 1997, 205). That war was coming. In June 1845, General Zachary Taylor was ordered to march troops to Corpus Christi on the Mexican frontier and wait. The pivotal Summer of 1845 had arrived when the Manifest Destiny phrase was born, a unifying theme for factions in American politics that was also a rebellion against the BIS. It coincided with a little-known tempest that might

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be called the “Balance of Power Crisis,” erupting over distorted American press coverage of a speech by Francois Guizot, the French prime minister (Merk 1966). The speech mentioned the desirability of a balance of power in the Americas between Britain, the United States, and Spain (Merk 1972, 52). Americans responded with shock and outrage at the idea that the United States would be constrained and that a balance of power could be set up in the Western Hemisphere by outsiders, against the will of the United States (Merk 1972, 53–54). The American minister in Paris reported that Guizot favored independence for Texas because it was in the interest of France to sustain the separate existence of a power with which she has contracted Treaties, as well as to prevent the excessive preponderance of any one of the great powers established upon the American continent. (Merk 1972, 52) Angry American newspapers insisted Europeans stay out of American affairs or be taught a lesson, reasserted the Monroe Doctrine of “non-colonization,” and promised republicanism would spread and defeat all aspects of “monarchism.” At exactly this moment, the phrase Manifest Destiny was articulated, in the July issue of the Democratic Review, by John L. O’Sullivan, an editor from New York and enthusiastic expansionist—the United States should “overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions” (Blake and Barck 1960, 199).4 1846–1852: Awkward Semi-Harmony of Interests

But in a few weeks in June–July 1846, things suddenly shifted to alter U.S. standing within the BIS. The Oregon issue went from saber-rattling to a sudden amicable settlement, and the Mexican–American war began, with Britain doing nothing to stop or influence it. Instead, Britain and the United States were passing major free trade legislation. PM Peel was convinced by late 1845 that repealing the Corn Laws was necessary (Hawkins 2009), exciting U.S. observers. In January 1846, the U.S. minister in France reported on London’s moderate tone, arguing that Oregon was not the crucial issue: If Sir Robert Peel can succeed in carrying out his comprehensive plan for the moderation of duties, it will open the best market in the world

4  A merican population growth was a key theme of this discourse and evidence of a great destiny (Merk 1966, 54).

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to the provisions of the United States and must I think cause our fireeaters to pause upon the war question and dispose them to a reasonable compromise. (Hietala 2003, 80) Peel’s bill was introduced on January 27, 1846. At just the right moment, in June of 1846, the Oregon boundary dispute with Britain was suddenly and finally resolved in a flurry of activity (Merry 2009, 263–267). The old 54:40 idea was dropped in favor of the 49th parallel. Shared Embrace of Free Trade and Territorial Tensions

In retrospect, March 1845–July 1846 was an optimal period for an Anglo– American free trade breakthrough. In early 1845, Peel signaled that a new round of trade liberalization was coming, and by October, he’d decided to fully repeal the protectionist Corn Laws (Hawkins 2009, 298). The progress of Corn Law repeal was watched closely in the United States and debated numerous times in the U.S. Congress (Pletcher 1973). London finally passed the repeal in late June 1846. British liberalization gave impetus for a similar American measure, and in July 1846, the Walker Tariff passed Congress, squeaking through the Senate by one vote. So much in sync were Polk’s and Peel’s actions that the American Whig opposition made charges of collusion to sabotage U.S. protective tariffs (Eyal 2007, 43). To gain Northern votes Polk had signaled before the 1844 election that he had protectionist sympathies, but then appointed Robert Walker as Secretary of the Treasury, a known free trader (Potter 1976, 26). The Walker Tariff has been called “one of the few real tariff reductions in American history” (Potter 1976, 26). The United States also signed a mutual free trade pact with Brazil in 1847, and reciprocal trade treaties with New Granada, Peru, Belgium, the Two Sicilies, and several German states (Eyal 2007, 42–43). Anglo–American trade amity continued. In August 1847, the United States proposed a commercial treaty to open the indirect trade between Britain and the Empire on a reciprocal basis (Jones 1974, 63). The United States offered to open all American ports to British ships, paying the same duties as American vessels, in return for reciprocity for American ships in all British and colonial ports (Jones 1974, 63). This helped in prompt abandoning of the Navigation Acts two years later. Britain did this unilaterally, and then the United States reciprocated, making 1846–1849 an early golden age for free trade in British International Society. And much of this was during the Mexican–American War, which might have maximized tensions. Was Britain, true to liberal ideology, thinking they should have good relations with the United States because of these trade liberalizations? Was free trade creating peace? Perhaps.

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The United States was also replicating British methods. During the Mexico War, a new commercial treaty between the United States and New Granada was agreed (Jones 1974, 69), but the Granadian foreign minister suggested an extension of the treaty to give the United States a right of way across Panama, in exchange for a guarantee of its neutrality and of New Granada’s sovereignty over it (Blake and Barck 1960, 234). New Granada was afraid that Britain or another power would seize the Isthmus of Panama, so this treaty granted the United States transit rights while at the same time maintaining the “perfect neutrality” of the route (Bailey 1946, 288). This paved the way for a Panama railway, which Americans completed in 1855. The United States mimicked Britain’s BIS, securing its informal control while keeping things open for others. Meanwhile, Mexico was destabilizing, with some frustrated Mexican elites even offering to make Zachary Taylor president of the country. In 1848 came the Yucatan Caste War of rebellious natives/Mayans. This was a potentially explosive mix as long as Polk was in office and pursuing a sort of regional hegemony strategy, but voices of restraint emerged after the war ended in February. In response to a rumor that the Yucatecans were about to offer themselves to Britain or Spain, we got the Polk Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in April 1848 (Bailey 1946, 288), that outside powers could not acquire territory in the Americas even with the invitation/consent of the local inhabitants. But the United States did not absorb the Yucatan either. After the Mexican War, 1848–1849 saw a sputtering territorial contest with Britain over the Yucatan and Cuba (Merk 1966). The United States attempted to purchase Cuba from Spain in 1848 (May 1989, 23), offering up to $100 million, but Madrid sharply rejected the offer. Southern slavery remained entangled with territory: [P]robably the most important factor in developing an appetite for Cuba was the slavery issue. As a result of the Mexican War the South had secured disappointingly little territory into which its “peculiar institution” could expand. If Northern preponderance in Congress were to be checked, the Southerners would have to find land from which new slave states could be carved. Cuba was by far the most desirable territory for such a purpose. (Bailey 1946, 306) The 1848 U.S. election saw Lewis Cass, a Democrat, “ultra” and leading expansionist, defeated by a “rising tide of antisouthern sentiment in the free states” (Hietala 2003, 250) that brought the Zachary Taylor/Millard Fillmore Whig ticket to office, and Southern interests were no longer ascendant. Taylor was president until his death in July of 1850, and then Fillmore succeeded him. Throughout 1849, minor tensions arose over rival British

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and American claims in the Caribbean and Central America, with sniping over coastal towns and small islands. One hotspot was the Gulf of Fonseca— where Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador meet—a possible western terminus of a Nicaragua canal (Bailey 1946, 290). Britain was interested in a Mosquito Coast protectorate in Nicaragua similar to her holdings in British Honduras (Jones 1974, 84). To resolve these issues, the new administration agreed to negotiations, culminating in April 1850 in the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty. (Clayton was US Secretary of State, Bulwer the new British minister in Washington.) The signatories pledged to cooperate on constructing an Isthmian canal and forbade American expansion in Central America while allowing a continued British presence. Unsurprisingly given American expansionist inclinations, the Clayton– Bulwer Treaty has been called “the most persistently unpopular pact ever concluded by the United States” (Bailey 1946, 292), a “self-denying pledge that would thwart the southward expansion of the American people” (1946, 292). The United States was now prevented from acquiring any of Central America, and Democrats were furious. To some, it violated the Monroe Doctrine by allowing Britain to keep its possessions in the area, but from another vantage, it strengthened the Doctrine, as the first formal acknowledgment by a great power of the Monroe Doctrine’s “noncolonization clause” (1946, 292) and marked the “high tide” of the British presence. Both Britain and the United States now abandoned plans to build an Isthmian canal under solo control. Though a second-rate power, the United States “succeeded in stopping both British expansion in Central America and a formidable attempt to secure a stranglehold on the Isthmian route” (Bailey 1946, 293), though much of 1850–1860 was spent bickering over the treaty. Clayton–Bulwer reinforced the Monroe Doctrine, keeping a greaterEuropean territorial compensation system out of the Americas (and pointing them to the Middle East, Africa, and Asia instead). In the bigger picture, the Taylor/Fillmore Whigs were able to instantiate by treaty a means of restraining the American government from much in the way of further expansion, regardless of who was in power. Whigs and the principles of the BIS coincided with non-territorialism. This was a foundation stone for a states-system in the Americas and forced the United States to conduct itself along more of an informal-empire strategy thereafter. What the Whigs and the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty generated instead of expansion was filibustering, private attempts to prey on countries and territories and seize them, probably for later absorption by the United States. Cuba and Nicaragua were favored targets, with a General Narciso Lopez making three attempts on Cuba in 1850–1851 alone (May 1989, 28). As to the trade agenda, in 1852, Commodore Matthew Perry was appointed to lead a mission to open up Japan, viewed as a rich country of 30 million people (about the same as the United States in 1855) and ideal for coaling stations.

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This follow-on to burgeoning U.S. interest in China also conformed to the expectations of the BIS: open another place for trade, let others join in as well, and not conquer territory. Southern Power Regained, within Limits, 1853–1860

The presidential terms of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, 1853–1860, represent a return of Southern power but within new constraints that hindered territorial expansion. For Pierce, the prize was still Cuba becoming a Southern slave state, but also perhaps Nicaragua and even Canada. The Pierce administration was full of Polk people, and expansionism was back on the agenda like the flipping of a switch. Pierce was a veteran of the Mexican War and ready for more, as the Democrats of 1852 “meant to resume where Polk had left off, and to repudiate the Whig program” (Potter 1976, 181). He appointed “a disproportionate number of southerners and members of what has been called the ‘Mexico gang’” to key foreign positions (Potter 1976, 182). Pierce’s first foray was to gain more of Mexico but with money, not blood. In 1853, James Gadsden of South Carolina went to Mexico to try to buy large chunks of it—Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Lower California—but Santa Anna would only sell a slice along the Gila River for a Southern rail route and not even a seaport (Potter 1976, 182). Britain stood in the way of these hopes. Having eroded the Brazilian slave trade substantially, Britain now focused on Cuba. By early 1853 American abolitionists were cheering them on, arguing that the only way the Cuban slave trade could be eliminated was if Britain would rigidly enforce her slave trade treaty with Spain—“The world expects in this matter that England will do her duty” (Fladeland 1972, 338). A new Spanish governor in Cuba launched a program to liberate much of the island’s slave population (Potter 1976, 186). By early 1854, accusations were flying that Britain was “plotting” with Spain to free the slaves in Cuba and “Africanize” Cuba so that it would be more difficult for the United States to take it over by whatever means (Fladeland 1972, 339). In April 1854, Washington ordered the American minister in Madrid to try and buy Cuba for up to $130 million (Potter 1976, 178–179). For American abolitionists, the situation was dire: “The [American] government has fallen into the hands of the slave power completely. So far as national politics are concerned, we are beaten – there’s no hope. We shall have Cuba in a year or two, Mexico in five” (Potter 1976, 193). But Southerners felt Cuba was a test: “Our destiny is intertwined with that of Cuba. If slave institutions perish there they will perish here” (Bailey 1946, 307). The United States, still eager to expand but constrained by opinion and Clayton–Bulwer, needed to work through purchasing or filibuster—not war or other violent means. In October 1854, the Ostend Manifesto, written by American ministers from London, Paris, and

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Madrid meeting in Belgium, was a memorandum to the State Department that scandalized public opinion around the world. It demanded annexation of Cuba, as integral to the future of the American Union (Eyal 2007, 139). But it and the pro-Southern Kansas–Nebraska Act of that year were death blows to expansion and “spelled the end of Manifest Destiny” (Eyal 2007, 139), discrediting it as a slave project. Domestically, the sectional polarization was complete, and arguably, the countdown to the Civil War had begun. Private and public territorial schemes and filibustering in the Caribbean and Central America continued between 1854 and 1860. In 1855, William Walker and 60 followers sailed down to participate in a Civil War in Nicaragua (Potter 1976, 193), and within a few months, he was in control of the country and named himself president. The United States and Britain continued to spar over Southern territories. In 1856, seeking to put pressure on the United States to concede to various demands in Central America, now Prime Minister Palmerston raised tensions by announcing the deployment of 4,000 troops to Canada to replace garrisons removed during the Crimean War (Jones 1974, 150). Weeks later, President Pierce boldly recognized the government of William Walker in Nicaragua (Bailey 1946, 299); the United States flirted with violating the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty and annexing Nicaragua. At the same time, however, free trade concord within the Anglo–American relationship continued, with three foci—Japan, Canada, and China—and the United States somewhat on the offensive in all three areas. In Japan, the United States was acting while Europe was occupied with the Crimean War. Fillmore had authorized Commodore Perry’s mission, but President Pierce was an enthusiast for it, and the British leaped to be involved. The envoy on the spot wrote in May 1854 (Jones 1974, 157): “I am bent on going North—to Japan if the Admiral can spare one ship, as no time ought to be lost in following up the Americans.” There was a friendly rivalry with America on trade and influence in East Asia, but fundamental values still overlapped. Could trade serve U.S. expansionist ambitions within BIS confines through attraction? Canada remained an American target, reflected in the 1854 Elgin–Marcy Treaty, a reciprocal treaty freeing trade in items including fish, tobacco, coal, furs, rice, and turpentine; Canadians got free navigation on Lake Michigan, the U.S. free navigation of the St. Lawrence (Blake and Barck 1960, 258). But the treaty was intended by some in the Pierce administration to bind Canada to the United States and pave the way for a U.S. takeover. Based on past trade disadvantages, some Canadians had started a movement to be annexed by the United States, though pressures eased with the end of the British Navigation Laws in 1849 (1960, 257). While Pierce and other Northern expansionists “hoped that closer Canadian-American accord would smooth the way for eventual annexation,” the new treaty

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alleviated Canadian economic problems and sapped interest in annexation (Blake and Barck 1960, 258). As to China, in 1855, President Pierce appointed Peter Parker, a former missionary there, as U.S. minister to China, who set off with instructions to secure “unlimited extension of our trade, wherever, within the dominions of China, commerce may be found” (Wong 1998, 272). On his way to China, Parker met with officials in London (1998, 272) to suggest a tripartite intervention with Britain and France in which their three navies would anchor near Beijing while they negotiated with the Chinese government. This agenda would be activated by Britain and France in 1856–1857, as soon as the Crimean War was over. Britain and the United States also shared concern about Russian expansion toward China and Japan around 1855–1860. The same issues lingered into the Buchanan administration, 1857– 1861. The slave trade flared again as global sugar prices rose 60% in 1857 over 1854, prompting a new global scramble for labor to produce sugar (Temperley 1972, 234). Thousands of Indian contract laborers were brought to the West Indies, but the slave trade also revived. British patrols resumed in the Caribbean and especially around Cuba, with occasional controversial inspections of American ships; the New York Herald even called for war, and there was an unabashed competition in Congress for producing abusive language toward the British (Fladeland 1972, 340). BFASS abolitionists, still very active, met with the U.K. government over Cuban slavery (Temperley 1972, 235): Could sanctions be placed on Cuba? Could Britain buy Cuba as the Americans had attempted? If too much pressure was put on Cuba, would the United States step in and seize it? By 1857, both signatories were sincerely interested in abrogating the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty but for different reasons. There were rumors that the United States was trying to separate Panama from New Granada (Jones 1974, 159). At the same time, Spain was considering an intervention into a decaying Mexico to protect Spanish citizens and property (May 1989, 141), an invasion scare that motivated the United States to consider intervening in Mexico as well. London toyed with coordinating a pact amongst Central American states and Venezuela to band together against filibusterers (Jones 1974, 165). There was reason for concern, as Buchanan made an aggressive push to acquire Cuba in 1859, thinking this would help him get re-elected in 1860 (May 1989). Britain kept up the effort to abolish the slave trade, but in 1858, finally conceded that it did not have a right to search on suspect ships (Fladeland 1972, 341). This calmed relations with the United States on this front but also meant the anti-slavery faction in the U.S. Congress could be much more energetic and insistent on sea patrolling without being tarred as British dupes (1972, 341). Agreement on trade enabled cooperation to further open trade in East Asia in 1858–1860, with British and French troops using force

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to pressure China, in the Second Opium War, to meet some of the treaty agreements made in the First, while the United States continued to apply pressure on Japan. This uneasy collaboration continued until the systemic shocks of the 1860s, and the international relations of the U.S. Civil War, brought the BIS to an end. Conclusions: The BIS and America as a Regional Power

Understanding the case of the United States inside the “British international society” provides insights into general accounts of international relations history and America’s role in it. First, the United States was establishing its dominance in the Western Hemisphere, validating the Mearsheimer (2001) “offensive realism” narrative—the United States sought regional hegemony ruthlessly when Southern Democrats were in power in 1841–1848. Slave interests had constructed Britain as an evil menace to American interests since 1835 at least, and as slavery ended in the British Empire, Southern fears combined with the concern for sectional balance brought a doubling of the size of the United States. But this development was in crucial ways in reaction to the expectations and policy pressures within British International Society. The BIS provided the perfect environment for the United States to achieve regional hegemony, aided, of course, by the Monroe Doctrine. The Clayton–Bulwer Treaty, devised with American Whigs, helped save the region from several more annexations. That plus the sectional divide inside the United States made further territorial expansion too controversial after 1850: Northerners disallowed Cuba and Nicaragua, and Southerners disallowed Canada while they talked of going for Brazil (May 1989). The Americas might have become an area like the European periphery and Africa, where a few powers (Austria, Russia, Britain, and France) gobbled up most of the territory amongst themselves, growing larger and larger. Instead, within the principles and expectations of the BIS, the United States established an informal-empire regime in the Americas, which permitted European commercial penetration only. This allowed many entities to become sovereign states, fostering a state system in the Americas, though with a regional hegemon. Thus, a state-sovereignty order in the Americas was in some ways also a co-production of U.S. interplay with British international society. Second, the BIS phenomenon adds to our understanding of the development of international society. The United States and Britain enjoyed the perks of an unsettled state system in which territory and sovereignty were up for grabs. Britain and the United States held to the terra nullius doctrine that territories could be seized and annexed if it was felt they weren’t being used well by their indigenes; American westward expansion was carried out under this rule (Keene 2002, 69–70). English School scholars have also

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remarked upon the universalist pretensions embedded in the ideas of the late Enlightenment, which helped generate the “burgeoning empire of free trade” that Britain pursued by the early nineteenth century (e.g., Zhang 2017, 219). Additionally, the “discourse of civilization” about Europe’s civilizational superiority was also available (O’Hagan 2005), sometimes deployed with devastating effect in the shared “Standard of Civilization” idea Europeans would use collectively later. But, interestingly, the British were inflicting their unilateral civilizational standard not only on actors outside European international society but also within it. Anti-slavery would become a consensus position amongst Europeans, on which basis they would intervene and seize colonies in Africa after 1870, for example, but it makes sense that Europeans might need to be socialized first by BIS pressures, amongst other factors before a consensus could form. What might have happened in this early, extra-European liberal international society? The discourse of civilization combined with free trade’s pretensions to universalism produced an ambitious order-building program, while non-territorialism kept formal conquest in check. Globally, therefore, the era before 1870 might have been a chance to engage in inter-civilizational dialogue before formal empire. However, the forced opening of China and Japan by Britain and the United States forestalled that possibility. Free trade was a dangerous religion—the latest policy-scientific reason for semiconquest and breaking into countries’ affairs. In the end, non-territorialism made only a little difference. The period 1830–1860 was an era in which the British tried not to colonize the world, exposing it to a liberal policy formula in pursuit of a utopia generated by free trade and a non-slavery legitimate trade. When all did not go as expected, Britain (and the United States) might have dialed back free trade pressuring but instead became more intrusive and shifted to formal empire expansion, joining in the notorious “New Imperialism” frenzy of 1871–1914 when so much of the world came under formal colonial rule. References Ashworth, L.M. (2014). A history of international thought. London: Routledge. Bailey, T.A. (1946). A diplomatic history of the American people, 3rd ed. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Barker, N.N. (1979). The French experience in Mexico, 1821–1861. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Blake, N.M. & Barck, Jr. O.T. (1960). The United States in its world relations. New York: McGraw-Hill. Bull, H. (1977). The anarchical society: A study of order in world politics. London: Macmillan. Doyle, M. (1986). Empires. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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Eyal, Y. (2007). The Young America Movement and the transformation of the democratic party, 1828–1861. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fladeland, B. (1972). Men and brothers: Anglo-American antislavery cooperation. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Go, J. (2011). Patterns of empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Green, M.J. (2019). By more than providence: Grand strategy and American power in the Asia Pacific since 1783. New York: Columbia University Press. Green, W.A. (1991). British slave emancipation: The sugar colonies and the great experiment, 1830–1865. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hawkins, A. (2009). The forgotten prime minister: The 14th Earl of Derby. Vol. I: Ascent, 1799–1851. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hietala, T.R. (2003). Manifest destiny: American exceptionalism and empire. Revised ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hinde, W. (1987). Richard Cobden: A Victorian outsider. New Haven: Yale University Press. Howe, A. (2007). Free trade and global order: The rise and fall of a Victorian vision. In D. Bell (Ed.), Victorian visions of global order, 26–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huzzey, R. (2012). Freedom burning: Anti-slavery and empire in Victorian Britain. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hyam, R. (2002). Britain’s imperial century, 1815–1914: A study of empire and expansion, 3rd ed. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Iliasu, A.A. (1971). The Cobden-Chevalier commercial treaty of 1860. Historical Journal 14(1), 67–98. Jones, H. & Rakestraw, D.A. (1997). Prologue to manifest destiny: Anglo-American relations in the 1840s. Wilmington: SR Books. Jones, W.D. (1974). The American problem in British diplomacy, 1841–1861. London: Macmillan. Keene, E. (2002). Beyond the anarchical society: Grotius, colonialism and order in world politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kennedy, P. (1989). The rise and fall of great powers. New York: Vintage Books. Langley, L.D. (1976). Struggle for the American Mediterranean, 1776–1904. Athens GA: University of Georgia Press. MacDonagh, O. (1962). The anti-imperialism of free trade. Economic History Review 14(3), 489–501. May, R.E. (1989). The southern dream of a Caribbean empire, 1854–1861. Athens GA: University of Georgia Press. Mearsheimer, J.J. (2001). The tragedy of great power politics. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. Merk, F. (1966). The Monroe doctrine and American expansion, 1843–1849. New York: Vintage Books. Merk, F. (1972). Slavery and the annexation of Texas. New York: Knopf. Merry, R.W. (2009). A country of vast designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican war, and the conquest of the American continent. New York: Simon & Schuster. Metcalf, T.R. (1997). Ideologies of the raj. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morgan, S. (2009). The Anti-Corn Law League and British anti-slavery in transatlantic perspective, 1838–1846. Historical Journal 52(1), 87–107.

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O’Brien, P.K. (2002). The Pax Britannica and American hegemony: Precedent, antecedent or just another history?” In P.K. O’Brien & A. Clesse (Eds.), Two hegemonies: Britain 1846–1914 and the United States 1941–2001, 3–64. Aldershot: Ashgate. O’Hagan, J. (2005). The question of culture. In A.J. Bellamy (Ed.), International society and its critics, 209–228. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pletcher, D. M. (1973). The Diplomacy of Annexation. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Porter, B. (1975). The Lion’s share: A short history of British imperialism, 1850– 1970. London: Longman. Potter, D.M. (1976). The impending crisis, 1848–1861. New York: Harper Colophon. Remini, R.V. (1997). Daniel Webster: The man and his time. New York: WW Norton. Stanley, B. (1983). ‘Commerce and Christianity’: Providence theory, the missionary movement, and the imperialism of free trade, 1842–1860. Historical Journal 26(1), 71–94. Temperley, H. (1972). British antislavery, 1833–1870. London: Longman. Todd, D. (2008). John Bowring and the global dissemination of free trade. Historical Journal 51(2), 373–397. Watson, A. (1992). The evolution of international society. London: Routledge. Wong, J.Y. (1998). Deadly dreams: Opium, imperialism and the Arrow war (1856– 1860) in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

8 THE UNITED STATES AND THE LIBERAL TRANSFORMATION OF INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY The Institution of Sovereignty Mikulas Fabry

Early U.S. policies pertaining to the institution of sovereignty had a decisive impact on the evolution of its rules and practices during the nineteenth century. Indeed, taken as a whole, U.S. policies spearheaded the process of replacement of dynastic solidarism with liberal pluralism as the dominant conception of the international society of states of that period, spanning the Euro–Atlantic area. This new conception centered around a distinct notion of one basic principle of sovereignty, non-intervention in the domestic affairs of foreign states, and three essential sovereignty practices: recognition of governments, neutrality vis-à-vis internal conflicts abroad, and recognition of states. Nearly forgotten today, this U.S. contribution came about as a result of gradual policy adoption by an ever-growing number of constitutional states in the Americas and Europe. The most important role in that diffusion, especially across Europe, was played by Great Britain, which embraced matching policies—partly in emulation of the United States, partly in collaboration with the United States, and partly independently of the United States but on the basis of corresponding liberal pluralist ideas. The Institution of Sovereignty and Its Change

There is a consensus among English School scholars that sovereignty is a fundamental institution of international society. Martin Wight (1977, 135) wrote that “it would be impossible to have a society of sovereign states unless each state, while claiming sovereignty for itself, recognized that every other state had the right to enjoy its sovereignty as well.” Hedley Bull (1972, 34) expressed essentially the same idea as Wight:

DOI: 10.4324/9781003334927-8

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a state’s right to sovereignty … is a right enjoyed to the extent that it is recognized to exist by other states. [Far] from it being the case that the sovereignty of the state is something antithetical to international order, it is the foundation of the whole edifice. (Bull 2000, 149) According to most writers linked to the English School, sovereignty, as reflected in international practice, represents the legal authority of “states” over a bounded territorial jurisdiction. It refers to two concurrent dimensions of that authority, one internal and the other external: (1) inwardly, states have supreme authority in relation to all other authorities within their territorial limits (Jackson 2007, 10) and (2) outwardly, they are constitutionally independent of all foreign authorities and thus legally subordinated to no actor outside of their territorial limits (James 1986, 25). Supreme authority and constitutional independence entitle states to have the final word over matters in their jurisdiction (Jackson 2007, 10). A few additional points need to be made. First, sovereignty is “a pluralistic arrangement of authority” (Jackson 2007, 8): it pertains, at the same time, to the multiplicity of states as opposed to only a single one. Second, this arrangement can exist only because the multiplicity of states mutually accept it as such and mutually accept each other as sovereign. Without such dual acceptance, there would simply be no basis for any international organization or order at all. Third, the shared principles, rules, and practices delineating this arrangement are what makes sovereignty an international institution and not merely a series of domestic authority claims. At their core there is a principle directly implied by the very conception of sovereignty: a requirement to stay out of matters of the domestic, internal authority of other sovereign states. If a state is to have its right to sovereignty respected, then other states have a prima facie obligation to abstain from intervening in its domestic jurisdiction (Vincent 1974, 14, 20). There can be little doubt that sovereignty is one of the primary institutions of international society. According to Barry Buzan (2014, 17), primary institutions “are constitutive of both states and international society, in that they define not only the basic character of states but also their patterns of legitimate behavior in relation to each other, as well as the criteria of membership of international society.” He distinguished them from secondary institutions, which are formal bodies and organizations founded for a specific purpose. As to the relationship between primary and secondary institutions, the primary ones are “the enduring fundamental practices which shape and constrain the formation, evolution, and demise of secondary institutions (Buzan 2005, 120).” How can one conceive of sovereignty as a primary institution and conceptualize its evolution? Tonny Brems Knudsen (2016, 104–105) helpfully

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distinguishes between the constitutive principles inherent in primary institutions and the range of practices by which they are reproduced. He sees a primary institution as: a (set of) constitutive principle(s) that make meaningful interaction possible, and (2) an associated set of practices by which the constitutive principles are reproduced at a given point in time, with (3) the combined effect of structuring the actions and interactions of states in a sociological rather than a deterministic sense. Knudsen (2016, 105) elaborates that institutional continuity is represented by the ongoing reproduction of one or more constitutive principles that are preconditions of meaningful interaction, while institutional change can be understood as (a) changes in the practices by which the constitutive principles are reproduced or maintained (= change in a primary institution), or in rare cases, (b) changes in the constitutive principles themselves (= change of a primary institution) (italics original). If “fundamental institutional continuity can be thought of as the ongoing reproduction of constitutive principles that make international society as such possible,” Knudsen (2016, 105) continues, “fundamental institutional change can be thought of as changes in reproducing practices and, in rare cases, change in the constitutive principles themselves.” His distinction between principles and practices as the key elements of primary institutions allows him to theorize the relationship between primary and secondary institutions “where the former makes the latter possible while the latter offers the former essential reproduction of fundamental principles and practices and often also designed and evolved changes in the reproducing practices.” Knudsen’s conceptualization of primary institutions and their change is quite compatible with that of Kal Holsti (2004) and Barry Buzan (2004; 2016, 129). Formulated in terms of Knudsen’s terminology, the constitutive principles of sovereignty as an international institution are (1) supreme authority within a state’s domestic jurisdiction, (2) constitutional independence from those outside that jurisdiction, and, by direct implication, (3) non-intervention in the domestic jurisdiction of other sovereign states. The associated practices are those that enact and embody the three constitutive principles, establishing the precise meaning and boundaries of the latter in actual international relations. One can ask what distinguishes the associated practices instantiating the constitutive principles of sovereignty from other practices of sovereignty. Buzan (2004, 178–181) is at pains to emphasize that while constitutive institutions define the players of the game and the basic rules

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by which the players relate to each other, what counts as “basic” may be blurry and subject to different interpretations. This chapter investigates the U.S. impact on the nineteenth-century evolution of sovereignty as a primary institution by examining what, unquestionably, are associated practices of its constitutive principles in that they embody the criteria of “sovereign statehood” and “government” that represents it and demarcate what counts as “non-intervention in the domestic jurisdiction of foreign states”: recognition of states, recognition of governments, and neutrality practices in regards to civil conflicts abroad.1 The United States did not challenge the constitutive principles of sovereignty: rather, it propelled, to use Knudsen’s terminology, fundamental changes in their associated practices or changes in sovereignty. In Holsti’s (2004,16) typology of different kinds of international change, the United States spearheaded a transformation of these associated practices. This U.S.-initiated transformation was aided and abetted most significantly by Great Britain, which, as a systemic great power, held sway both in the Americas and across the European continent. Early European Understandings of Recognition and Non-Intervention

The modern international society of states began with the emergence of multiple self-constituted European territorial entities, the central governments of which claimed and maintained rule independent of external authorities. In the course of the seventeenth century, these de facto entities began to accept each other as “sovereign states” and to conduct their relations on the basis of shared, international law. Once constituted as a legal and political arrangement, the international society of states came to encounter, first, recurring disputes over who is the legitimate ruler of an existing state, often involving two or more claimants and, subsequently, disputes over new claims of statehood emanating from within an existing state. Facing conflicting assertions, existing states needed to ascertain whether the claimants qualified as “governments” or “states” for the purposes of mutual relations and broader international legal and political standing. The responses to this imperative developed into the distinct and recurrent activities of “recognition of governments” and “recognition of states.” By “recognition,” existing states would certify—bilaterally and, if followed by other existing states,

1  T his focus is consistent with Holsti’s (2004, 132) understanding that “the constitutive aspects of sovereignty deal primarily with legal equality, state creation, and recognition.” His discussion of these aspects includes recognition, exclusive legal jurisdiction within a defined territory, and the historical patterns of state creation and demise (Holsti 2004, 113-142).

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cumulatively—that a claimant was a “government” or a “state.”2 If attained, such cumulative recognition would transform mere internal assertion into externally accepted status. Only if a previously disputed ruler was generally “recognized” as a “government” or a new territorial entity had generally been “recognized” as a “state” was it regarded and treated as such in international diplomacy and law. Over time, thus, the society of states came to ontologically precede any new state or government; the collectivity of states morphed from “an aggregate of separate communities” into “itself a community: a community of communities tied together by its constitutive practices, including those defining the attributes of statehood” (Nardin 1992, 26). In contrast to earlier “separate communities” such as Austria, France, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden which predated the modern era and were original members of the society of states, later founded polities became constituted as “states” internationally only after seeking and receiving foreign recognition. The same became true of contested regimes claiming the status of “governments” of their states. Most eighteenth-century states were absolute hereditary monarchies, and the rules governing rightful government and statehood internationally were encompassed within a larger set of rules known as dynastic legitimacy. New rulers had to meet complex rules of dynastic succession, and new states had to receive the consent of the legitimate ruler governing their territory. While states were generally not supposed to intervene in matters of foreign internal governance, it was understood that they could do so if any internal disputes injured them or violated international rules, including those of dynastic legitimacy. The United States Pushes Change: Recognition of Governments, Neutrality toward Foreign Internal Conflicts, and Recognition of States

Although the United States differed profoundly from most existing states— it was the first modern country established as a liberal republic—it fully accepted the constitutive principles of sovereignty in international relations: supreme authority, constitutional independence, and non-intervention in the domestic affairs of other states. This is clear from numerous pronouncements of not only leaders of the executive branch but also members of Congress and the federal judiciary. However novel and unique its domestic system of governance might have been, the United States saw itself as one sovereign state 2  “States” in international law are bearers of a distinctive package of rights, obligations, powers, and immunities and “governments” have the legal capacity to assert rights, incur obligations, exercise powers, and confer immunities on behalf of “states” for a period of time (Roth 2015, 145).

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among many and, as made clear in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, subject to “the law of nations,” that is customary international law. While early U.S. statespersons affirmed non-intervention—frequently referencing writings of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century international lawyers—their conception of the principle was normatively grounded in classical liberalism.3 In addition to advocating constitutional government grounded in popular consent and dedicated to protecting basic rights, this older strain of liberalism highlighted the pluralist need to respect the equally liberal principles of autonomy and self-determination of human beings. Applied to the conduct of international relations, these principles were taken to prescribe non-intervention in the internal affairs of states.4 Questions of domestic rule had to be the choice and responsibility of those living under it: foreign intervention amounted to an infringement of the right of sovereign peoples to determine how they were to be governed and to an exercise of power without responsibility for that governance. Recognition of Governments

In contrast to those espousing dynastic legitimacy, classical liberals believed that a legitimate government was one that ruled with the sanction of its people. However, even though thinkers going back to John Locke (1988, 384) and Immanuel Kant (1991, 94) made clear government was to be based on popular consent, they did not explore the institutional questions of how this consent can be domestically given and internationally assessed. The United States first confronted the question of who constituted a government in a disputed situation when confronting a series of irregular governmental changes during the French Revolution. While European states refused to accept the 1792 overthrow of French King Louis XVI and the republican government that replaced him, Thomas Jefferson, who was secretary of state at the time, contended that the requirement of the consent of the governed did not demand any particular type of government. On the contrary, the requirement allowed a variety of political systems. Speaking of his country, Jefferson said:

3  Classical liberalism preceded liberal internationalism as the dominant liberal perspective on international affairs. On the split within liberal thought on international affairs, see Simpson (2001), Sørensen (2006) and Walker (2008). 4  T he substance of what this prescription encompassed was established in subsequent practice. It generally came to (1) apply to domestic situations where no foreign state had previously intervened and (2) proscribe what international lawyers called “dictatorial” interference either in the form of material coercion or of unwarranted authoritative acts carrying international legal implications (such as premature recognition). Purely verbal expressions of sympathy for a domestic faction, for example, were not seen as a form of prohibited intervention by U.S. leaders.

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We surely can not deny to any nation that right whereon our own government is founded—that every one may govern itself according to whatever form it pleases, and change these forms at its own will; and that it may transact its business with foreign nations through whatever organ it thinks proper … The will of the nation is the only thing essential to be regarded.5 Tolerance of diverse types of regimes still left uncertain the question of how to deal with a foreign ruler who seizes power by disputed means, whatever his country’s form of government might have been. What is more, the U.S. founders professed a belief in the right of revolution; that is, in the right of people to resort to means outside of their domestic legal system to depose a government they deem oppressive or unjust. Starting with Jefferson, the response by U.S. governments set the foundation of the nineteenth-century international practice of recognition of governments. Following a situation of contested change of government in a foreign country, U.S. governments refused to probe matters of domestic legality of that country, contending that this properly belonged to the people subject to that law. They acknowledged as internationally legitimate the government that effectively established itself as the supreme authority of the state. “Effective” or “de facto” control did not mean the mere physical control of governmental machinery; it, crucially, required observable evidence that the new authorities had popular acceptance (Lauterpacht 1947, 124–126).6 In the twentieth century, the principle of effectiveness would come to be regarded as directly contradicting the principle of the consent of the governed, but the former, in fact, arose as a direct response to the challenge of giving the latter practical effect in international relations (Roth 1999, 414). It was because the two were linked that Jefferson, the primary author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, could at the same time be a founder of the practice of recognition of effective or de facto governments. Effectiveness became the default indicator of popular consent principally because the sheer variety of political systems, as well as dynastic, electoral, and constitutional circumstances in which contested governmental changes took place, precluded any consensus on what constitutes a valid procedure for assessing it. In the absence of such a consensus, outsiders

5 Jefferson, Secretary of State, to Morris, Minister to France, March 12, 1793, in Moore (1906, 120). 6 For surveys of the nineteenth-century U.S. practice of recognition of governments, see Wharton (1886, 521-551) and Moore (1906, 119-164). Effective control also presupposed the ability and willingness to fulfill of the state’s existing external obligations. While foreign peoples had a right to change their government, their new leaders did not have a right to dispense with the country’s duties toward outsiders.

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committed to non-intervention in the domestic affairs of a state were compelled to work backward and presume popular consent from the settled situation of popular acquiescence to the new authorities, or what Jefferson called “the will of the nation substantially declared.”7 According to Brad Roth (1999, 39), a people’s acceptance of its government’s legitimacy [was] inferred, and the government’s entitlement to international recognition presumed, from the combination of (a) the people’s observable compliance with that government’s rule and (b) a plausible account of how the populace might regard the regime as legitimate. If, in the aftermath of an irregular regime change, a population came to pay taxes, render military service, and habitually obey the regime in actual control of the governmental apparatus, then the population was deemed to have consented to that regime. During the first half of the nineteenth century, as the number of absolute monarchies championing dynastic legitimacy declined and the number of constitutional governments grew, recognition of de facto governments gradually replaced the previously dominant recognition of dynastically legitimate governments. This occurred because recognizing de facto governments became seen as part and parcel of the foreign policy identity of constitutional government as such. The practice did not spread by a simple imitation of the U.S. policy. Great Britain played an essential transmitting role, especially in Europe. As that country had undergone a series of reforms that strengthened the parliament at the expense of the monarchy at the end of the eighteenth and early in the nineteenth century, successive British governments adopted in their policy of recognition of governments principles identical to those of the United States,8 including a belief in the right of revolution (Vincent 1974, 72). But they did so with an explicit awareness of, and clear affinity with, the U.S. policy (Sexton 2011, 63–64). Recognition of de facto governments then dominated international practice not only in the nineteenth century but also in extensive periods of the twentieth century (Peterson 1997). In a major 1915 study, Julius Goebel (1915, 221) called Jeffersonian recognition policy and the U.S. approach to non-intervention “one of the distinctive contributions of United States diplomacy to the present international system.”

7  Jefferson, Secretary of State, to Morris, Minister to France, November 7, 1792, in Moore (1906, 120). 8  For a survey of the British practice, see Smith (1932, 100-115, 170-180, 197-205).

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Neutrality toward Foreign Internal Conflicts

One of the early U.S. contributions to international law was the development of neutrality laws and practices in relation to interstate wars abroad. In 1793, President Washington declared U.S. neutrality with respect to the war between revolutionary France and its neighbors. A year later, Congress adopted the American Neutrality Act imposing specific obligations on the U.S. persons and entities, which was then followed by a supplementary act passed in 1797 (on the importance of neutrality in early U.S. foreign policy, see Hendrickson’s chapter in this volume). These and later instances of congressional neutrality legislation as well as several U.S. Supreme Court decisions clarifying U.S. neutrality obligations would serve as a model for other countries in the nineteenth century (Westengard 1918, 10–12). In 1815, the Madison administration began invoking existing U.S. neutrality laws in relation to foreign intrastate wars, and in 1817, the Monroe administration embarked on formally upgrading these laws and crafting new neutrality policies to apply to such wars. The latter initiatives included pushing through congressional legislation that expressly extended U.S. neutrality laws beyond interstate wars (the Neutrality Act of 1817) and then revamping the 1794 legislation (the Neutrality Act of 1818) in light of it (Lieblich 2013, 85; Dumbauld 1937, 263). One initiative involved introducing the policy of recognition of belligerency. Once the conflict between the government and its domestic opponents escalated into general warfare, the United States would grant, as part of declared or implied neutrality, equal belligerent status and rights with respect to the laws of war to both sides, just as in the case of two warring states (Lauterpacht 1947, 181–182). As with recognition of governments, neutrality laws and policies were formulated not in abstract but in response to actual developments abroad. The context was (1) Latin American wars of independence against the Spanish crown and (2) a mounting political confrontation with the major European powers espousing dynastic legitimacy, which in the aftermath of the French Revolutionary Wars established what became known as the Holy Alliance. The Holy Alliance not only repudiated the Spanish–American secessionists as unlawful rebels against the legitimate monarch, but it also claimed the right to use force on behalf of that monarch against the rebels in his domestic jurisdiction as a way of restoring Spanish rule across the Americas. This generated strong opposition from the United States, and in short order, also from Great Britain. While both the United States and the Holy Alliance affirmed the constitutive principle of non-intervention, they disagreed on what constituted valid exceptions to it. Contending that it sought to prevent a recurrence of French revolutionary expansionism and Napoleonic conquests, the Holy Alliance held that whereas states generally had no right to intervene coercively into the

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domestic sphere of states, they had a right to do so with respect to “Jacobin” revolts against legitimate monarchs, as these could threaten, even if only potentially and indirectly, other states. This was not a mere verbal assertion: The Holy Alliance undertook several military interventions to restore royals overthrown by domestic revolutionaries, including the heads of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (1821) and Spain (1823). In contrast, American statespersons held that unless their vital interests were actually and directly injured, states had an obligation to stay neutral and to refrain from intervening in foreign civil conflicts. This position sprang from the same belief as recognition of de facto governments—that each people have a natural right to determine their political destiny, which included a right to renounce the sovereignty under which they live. American statespersons understood this right—the term “selfdetermination” did not yet enter the vocabulary—as “the right of a people ‘to become free by their own efforts’ if they can, and non-intervention [was] the principle guaranteeing that their success will not be impeded or their failure prevented by the intrusion of an alien power” (Walzer 2015, 88), paralleling classical liberal thinkers such as Kant (1991, 96) and J.S. Mill (1962, 410–411). In their view, neutrality required that third parties refrain from providing any assistance—to either the government or its opponents—that can materially affect the outcome of the struggle. This necessarily extended to actors with which one sympathized, as was the case with the United States and Spanish–American territories seeking independence. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, the key architect of the Monroe administration’s nonintervention policy, put it thus: I am satisfied that the cause of the South Americans, so far as it consists in the assertion of independence against Spain, is just. But the justice of a cause, however it may enlist individual feelings in its favor, is not sufficient to justify third parties in siding with it.9 Why were outsiders not to side with what they deemed to be just causes? In his official and private writings, Adams referred to three distinct reasons: legal, moral, and prudential. Adams made clear that acknowledging the right of Spanish Americans to revolution and independence did not put an end to the legal obligations of the United States toward Spain. International law and basic principles of sovereignty, in his eyes, demanded that third parties eschew taking part in internal disputes of foreign countries, including secessions. The United States was to respect Spain’s sovereignty in Central and South America

9  John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, to President Monroe, August 24, 1818, in Adams (1916, 443).

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as long as Spain “could entertain a reasonable hope of maintaining the war and of recovering her authority.” Adams was against recognizing Spanish– American territories prematurely. Contending that to do so would have meant “trespassing on [the US government’s] duties to Spain by assuming as decided that which was precisely the question of the war.”10 Aside from its entrenchment in law, neutrality was also warranted on distinct moral grounds. Adams believed that while the inalienable rights cited in the U.S. Declaration of Independence were universal, securing them was the responsibility of each political community itself. In the world of multiple states set apart by separate political existence, each people formed a distinct “moral person” and each member of a people was “personally responsible for his society” (quoted in Russell 1993, 3). This meant not only that the primary responsibility of a country’s statespersons was to their polity but also that authoritative judgments about secessionist or other internal revolts belonged to the directly involved parties rather than outsiders. “By what right we could take sides?” Adams asked with respect to the contests in Latin America. “Who in this case of civil war constituted us the judges which of the parties has the righteous cause? (italics original).”11 Just as outsiders could not judge authoritatively the merits of foreign peoples’ claims, they could not intervene materially to bring them about. The attainment of independence could not but rest on the shoulders of the people who desired it. In fact, a people’s determination to exist as an independent country was most convincingly expressed and gauged through the ability to establish it on the ground. President Monroe conveyed this point bluntly: If the revolting territories did not beat Spain on their own accord, they did not deserve to be free.12 Finally, Adams was convinced that there were also compelling prudential reasons for U.S. neutrality. In his view, foreign civil contests, including those couched in the language of liberty, could disguise less than noble human motives. Substantive intervention in them could lead to perilous entanglements abroad that might have harmful consequences for society at home; yet, the principal concern of the U.S. government had to be the well-being of the American polity. Reacting to calls of some in Congress for tangible assistance to Spanish Americans and Greek secessionists who had just launched an uprising against the Ottoman Empire, Adams famously declared: Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her

10  John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, to Richard C. Anderson, appointed United States Minister to Colombia, May 27, 1823, in Manning (1925, 194). 11  John Quincy Adams to Alexander Hill Everett, December 29, 1817, in Adams (1916, 281). 12  President Monroe to Andrew Jackson, December 21, 1818, quoted in Whitaker (1941, 211).

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prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own … She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force … She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. (italics original)13 In 1817, the United States granted the Spanish–American territories fighting for independence equal belligerent rights and declared itself neutral in the conflict with their parent state (Martin 1921, 75). Adopting its neutrality legislation, the Foreign Enlistment Act, on the model of the US Neutrality Act of 1818 (Little 2013, 1122), Britain followed suit in 1819. Neutrality with respect to civil wars and extension of belligerent status to both sides in them would then be embraced by constitutional governments in the Americas and Europe as the century progressed and as the number of Holy Alliance adherents insisting that rebels against legitimate governments could not be considered rightful belligerents, dwindled. Probably the most significant instance of the practice in the nineteenth century was the British declaration of neutrality and recognition of the Confederate States of America as a belligerent at the beginning of the U.S. Civil War in 1861, which was subsequently followed by France and other states. The move generated an adverse reaction from the United States, but the disagreement was not about the rules of recognition of belligerency—the parties referenced the same rulebook—but rather whether facts of the case satisfied these rules and qualified the Confederacy for belligerent status at the time of its extension. When the U.S. Supreme Court indirectly sided with Britain in finding the Confederacy to be a belligerent, the Lincoln administration ceased voicing its opposition to third-party policies of neutrality toward the two warring sides (Little 2013, 1121–1123). “Recognition of belligerency” can be considered to be a secondary institution in the sense that it was a rule-based practice that was a part of the larger set of practices of neutrality in internal conflicts required by the constitutive principle of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of states. Although studies of secondary institutions have principally

13  John Quincy Adams, Address of July 4, 1821, in Adams (1965, 45).

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focused on formal international organizations (Knudsen and Navari 2019), these institutions, as Kilian Spandler (2015, 613–614) points out, do not have to be necessarily formalized. A related U.S.-shaped secondary institution accompanying declared neutrality in relation to foreign civil conflicts was “recognition of insurgency.” While belligerency would be granted in the case of warfare between two sides in effective control of territory and entailed the full spectrum of rights under the laws of war, insurgency encompassed a conflict between a government and an antigovernment side with less established territorial control and political– military organization. Recognized insurgents were granted more limited and provisional privileges than recognized belligerents. Still, neutrality was upheld in relation to both sides of the struggle. It should be noted that “recognition of insurgency” was a less well-defined practice than that of “belligerency” as there were substantive differences among countries on certain specific matters, such as disagreements between the United States and European powers, on the one hand, and Latin American countries, on the other, over whether governments could close insurgent-held ports in the absence of an effective blockade (Lieblich 2013, 87). Nevertheless, both practices endured throughout the nineteenth century and declined only in the twentieth century under new approaches to valid exceptions to non-intervention in civil conflicts, including gradual international acceptance after 1945 of intervention by invitation of a government (Higgins 1984, 40–42). Recognition of States

As was the case with neutrality laws and policies in regard to foreign civil conflicts, the U.S. policy of recognition of new states began developing in response to the Spanish–American secessionist bids and in opposition to the interventionist Holy Alliance doctrine of dynastic legitimacy (on the significance of U.S. recognition policy with respect to Latin America see also Stivachtis’ chapter in this volume). It was both an extension of the earlier Jeffersonian policy of recognition of governments and a logical outcome of the policy of neutrality toward the conflicts generated by those bids. If people had the right to determine its rulers and if the third parties had the duty to abstain from intervening in the process of “self-determination” in a foreign jurisdiction, then the third parties had an obligation to respect the outcome of that process. U.S. recognition amounted to the legal and diplomatic acceptance that a new state was, in fact, conclusively established. Just as with the U.S. policy of neutrality with respect to civil conflicts, the key person shaping the U.S. policy of recognition of new states was John Quincy Adams. His justification of U.S. acknowledgment of the first wave

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of new Spanish–American states to the legitimist Spanish government in 1822 nicely encapsulated the basis of the U.S. policy: In every question relating to the independence of a nation, two principles are involved; one of right, and the other of fact; the former exclusively depending upon the determination of the nation itself, and the latter resulting from the successful execution of that determination … The United States … yielded to an obligation of duty of the highest order by recognizing as independent states nations which, after deliberately asserting their right to that character, have maintained and established it against all the resistance which had been or could be brought to oppose it … This recognition … is the mere acknowledgment of existing facts, with the view to the regular establishment, with the nations newly formed, of those relations, political and commercial, which it is the moral obligation of civilized and Christian nations to entertain reciprocally with one another. (italics original)14 This statement is revealing on multiple levels. First, Adams anchored de facto statehood in the classical liberalism of his predecessor Jefferson. A collectivity that had attained statehood in demonstrable fact was entitled to the acknowledgment of that statehood in law due to the decisive normative meaning of the achievement: The formation of a stable, effective territorial entity in which the population habitually obeyed the new rulers was taken as an authoritative expression of the will of the people to constitute an independent state as neither the de facto state’s founding nor its continued existence could come to pass without at least tacit approval by its inhabitants. Just as in the case of new governments, any foreign assessment of popular will was necessarily presumptive: the de facto state was taken to embody Jefferson’s “will of the nation substantially declared.” It was this presumption of popular consent—and its moral eclipsing of the idea of dynastic consent—that, in American eyes, converted the fact of new independent states into the right to independent statehood and external recognition. Second, Adams’ letter reiterated the proper role of third parties in civil contests over statehood. In his explanation of the relationship between the right of “self-determination” and recognition, Adams implied that U.S. respect for the right of the Spanish Americans to change the sovereignty under which they lived did not terminate the duty of the United States to continue to respect Spain’s sovereignty in the Americas. But in contrast to the Holy Alliance doctrine, this obligation was not unlimited or infinite: It depended on Spanish America being ruled by Spain. The displacement of

14  John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, to Joaquín de Andagua, Spanish Minister to the United States, April 6, 1822, in Manning (1925, 156).

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the parent country by a “self-determined” de facto state extinguished that obligation. In an earlier letter to President Monroe, Adams put the matter thus: “The fact and the right combined can alone authorize a neutral to acknowledge a new and disputed sovereignty. The neutral may, indeed, infer the right from the fact, but not the fact from the right.”15 Third, the statement evoked the existence of “civilized” and “non-civilized” entities. Adams and other early U.S. policymakers understood statehood in early modern naturalist terms: as a territorial entity with an effective government actually independent of external entities. Over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the growing dominance of positive law brought with it a novel dimension: the naturalist understanding of statehood came to presuppose “civilization.” Only entities that met this standard, as judged by existing sovereign states of Christian European background, qualified for the full gamut of sovereign rights in the international arena. In this respect, the United States was entirely at one with European powers: its successive administrations accepted that less than “civilized” entities in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Oceania were not fully “sovereign” in the sense of (Euro–Atlantic) international law and that “sovereign” states were entitled to interfere in their internal matters, whether through unequal, non-reciprocal relations, forcible colonization, or various intermediate schemes. This attitude was, over time, expressed by the United States in a multitude of contexts, including in relations with the Native American tribes, the Barbary States of North Africa, the long-established monarchies of China, Japan, Hawaii, and Samoa, and the new black republics of Haiti and Liberia (until their recognition by the Lincoln administration in 1862).16 U.S. recognition policy and the criteria of de facto or effective statehood applied only to presumptively “civilized” polities.17 Perhaps the most famous proclamation of the U.S. policy was in an annual message to Congress that later became known as the Monroe Doctrine. In the address, President Monroe insisted that the United States acknowledged on “just principles” the Latin American states “who have declared their independence and

15  John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, to President Monroe, August 24, 1818, in Adams (1916, 443). 16  T his reality was perhaps best captured by Adams’ (1910, 307) affirmation in 1841 that in addition to the “law of nations between Christian communities … recognized by the constitution and the laws of the United States,” there was “a separate and different law of nations for the regulation of or intercourse with the Indian tribes of our own continent; another law of nations between us, and the woolly headed natives of Africa; another with the Barbary Powers and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire; a law of nations with the inhabitants of the Isles of the Sea … and, lastly, a law of nations with the flowery land, the Celestial Empire, the Mantchoo Tartar dynasty of despotism.” 17  For a survey of the U.S. practice of recognizing states in the nineteenth century, see Goebel (1915, chs. 5-8).

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maintained it” and affirmed, more broadly, that the United States considered “the government de facto as the legitimate government.”18 This declaration was part of a larger appeal to European states in the wake of the Holy Alliance’s forcible restoration of the absolute king in Spain not to intervene in Spanish–American territories on behalf of their internally dispossessed sovereign. The United States non-interventionist warning was negotiated and coordinated with the British, who ultimately issued their own separate warning to the Holy Alliance known as the Polignac Memorandum; there was no joint course of action partly because of Adams’ suspicions that the move might tie the United States to British preferences in the Americas. The criteria of de facto statehood—a “civilized” polity that was actually independent of all external authorities and had an effective government that was, internally, in manifest control of the claimed population and territory and, externally, willing and able to fulfill international obligations of a state—were gradually incorporated into recognition policies of first Great Britain and then other powers in the course of the nineteenth century (Fabry 2010, chs. 2-3). Having also the practical advantage of investing the new authorities with international responsibility for externally harmful acts emanating from their territories and territorial waters, the criteria became the undisputed standard of recognition in the Americas, and with the decline of the Holy Alliance and the rise of constitutional governments across Europe, they displaced the criterion of dynastic rights. The criteria of de facto statehood were invoked not only in response to unilateral secessions, such as Texas (1836) and the Confederate States of America (1861–1865) but also to other types of internally effected changes to existing statehood, such as the merger of several states into the Kingdom of Italy (1859–1861). Moreover, the criteria were applied in a wide range of contexts, including those involving ethnically defined peoples without prior juridical status or boundaries (e.g., the unilateral secession of Greece, 1821–1832) and foreign military interventions in defense of third-party rights (e.g., the unilateral secession of Belgium, 1830–1839). By virtue of the transformation of key practices of sovereignty initiated by the United States, the international society of states gradually moved from dynastic solidarism to liberal pluralism. In Quincy Wright’s (1959, 177) words, the political right of revolution, the legal right to recognition, and the policy of recognizing de facto governments, suggested by the Declaration of Independence and Monroe Doctrine, were increasingly accepted and applied by all states during the nineteenth century, and marked a considerable change in the practices of international law.

18  T he term “government” was, at the time, used for both governing regimes and states, but these two senses were clearly distinguished in practice. See Message of President James Monroe, December 2, 1823, in Manning (1925, 217).

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One mark of that change was that by the end of the century, international law textbooks routinely depicted recognition of de facto governments and de facto states as well as neutrality practices toward civil conflicts such as recognition of belligerency as reflecting general international law (Westlake 1904, 50–59). The practices associated with liberal pluralism in the Euro–Atlantic world of the nineteenth century eroded in the course of the twentieth century. While the reasons behind that gradual and uneven erosion are highly complex, multifaceted, and global, one of them was a shift, at the turn of the twentieth century, in the dominant U.S. understanding of liberalism in foreign policy from non-interventionism to interventionism in the domestic jurisdiction of states. If Monroe’s annual message of 1823 put forward an implicit non-interventionist conception of the society of states—that conception was reaffirmed as late as 1895 by Secretary of State Richard Olney (Sexton 2011, 206)—the annual message of President Teddy Roosevelt in 1904, later known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, represented its almost exact opposite (Ricard 2006): a license for dictatorial interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states for professed liberal ends in the absence of actual and direct harm to what had been understood to be vital U.S. interests. The belief in such a license has proved resilient among U.S. policymakers, even if its actual effect on the conduct of U.S. foreign relations has varied considerably over time. References Adams, J. Q. (1910). Address on the Opium War, 1841. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 43, Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society. Adams, J. Q. (1916). Writings of John Quincy Adams. Vol. 6 (W. Ford, Ed.). New York: The Macmillan Company. Adams, J. Q. (1965). John Quincy Adams and American continental empire (W. LaFeber, Ed.). Chicago: Quadrangle Books. Bull, H. (1972). The theory of international politics 1919–1969. In B. Porter (Ed.), The Aberystwyth papers: International politics 1919–1969. London: Oxford University Press, 30–55. Bull, H. (2000). The state’s positive role in world affairs. In K. Alderson & A. Hurrell (Eds.), Hedley Bull on international society. London: Macmillan Press. Buzan, B. (2004). From international to world society? English School theory and the social structure of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Buzan, B. (2005). International political economy and globalization. In A. J. Bellamy (Ed.), International society and its critics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 115–133. Buzan, B. (2014). An introduction to the English School of international relations. Cambridge: Polity. Buzan, B. (2016). Taking the English School forward. Cooperation and Conflict, 51 (1), 127–132.

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Dumbauld, E. (1937). Neutrality laws of the United States. The American Journal of International Law, 31 (2), 258–270. Fabry, M. (2010). Recognizing states: International society and the establishment of new states since 1776. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goebel, J. (1915). The recognition policy of the United States. New York: Columbia University Press. Higgins, R. (1984). ‘Intervention and international law. In H. Bull (Ed.), Intervention in world politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 29–44. Holsti, K. J. (2004). Taming the sovereigns: Institutional change in international politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jackson, R. (2007). Sovereignty. Cambridge: Polity. James, A. (1986). Sovereign statehood: Basis of international society. London: Allen & Unwin. Kant, I. (1991). Political writings. 2nd enlarged ed. (H. Reiss, Ed. and H. B. Nisbet, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Knudsen, T. B. (2016). Solidarism, pluralism and fundamental institutional change. Cooperation and Conflict, 51 (1), 102–109. Knudsen T. B. & Navari C. (Eds.). (2019). International organization in the anarchical society: The institutional structure of world order. Chem: Palgrave Macmillan. Lauterpacht, H. (1947). Recognition in international law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lieblich, E. (2013). International law and civil wars: Intervention and consent. London: Routledge. Little, R. (2013). Intervention and non-intervention in international society: Britain’s response to the American and Spanish Civil Wars. Review of International Studies, 39 (5), 1111–1129. Locke, J. (1988). Two treatises of government (P. Laslett, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Manning, W. R. (Ed.). (1925) Diplomatic correspondence of the United States concerning the independence of the Latin American nations. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press. Martin, C. E. (1921). The policy of the United States as regards intervention. New York: Columbia University Press. Mill, J. S. (1962). A few words on non-intervention. In G. Himmelfarb (Ed.), John Stuart Mill: Essays on politics and culture. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 396–413. Moore, J. B. (1906). A digest of international law. Vol. 1. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Nardin, T. (1992). International ethics and international law. Review of International Studies, 18 (1), 19–30. Peterson, M. J. (1997). Recognition of governments: Legal doctrine and state practice, 1815–1995. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Ricard, S. (2006). The Roosevelt Corollary. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 36 (1), 17–26. Roth, B. R. (1999). Governmental legitimacy in international law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Roth, B. R. (2015). Reconceptualizing recognition of states and governments. In C. Daase, C. Fehl, A. Geis & G. Kolliarakis (Eds.), Recognition in international relations: Rethinking a political concept in a global context. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 141–161. Russell, G. (1993). John Quincy Adams and the ethics of America’s national interest. Review of International Studies, 19 (1), 23–38. Sexton, J. (2011). The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and nation in nineteenth-century America. New York: Hill and Wang. Simpson, G. (2001). Two liberalisms. European Journal of International Law, 12 (3), 537–571. Smith, H. A. (1932). Great Britain and the law of nations. Vol. 1. London: P.S. King & Son. Sørensen, G. (2006). Liberalism of restraint and liberalism of imposition: Liberal values and world order in the new millennium. International Relations, 20 (3), 251–272. Spandler, K. (2015). The Political International Society: Change in Primary and Secondary Institutions. Review of International Studies, 41 (3), 601–622. Vincent, R. J. (1974). Nonintervention and international order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Walker, T. C. (2008). Two faces of liberalism: Kant, Paine and the question of intervention. International Studies Quarterly, 52 (3), 449–468. Walzer, M. (2015). Just and unjust wars. 5th ed. New York: Basic Books. Westengard, J. I. (1918). American influence upon international law. Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law, 18 (1), 2–14. Westlake, J. (1904). International law. Part I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wight, M. (1977). Systems of states (H. Bull, Ed.). Leicester: Leicester University Press. Wharton, F. (Ed.). (1886). A digest of the international law of the United States. Vol. 1. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Whitaker, A. P. (1941). The United States and the independence of Latin America, 1800–1830. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press. Wright, Q. (1959). The strengthening of international law. In The collected courses of the Hague academy of international law. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Vol. 98.

9 WHEATON’S ELEMENTS AND THE EXPANSION OF INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY Cornelia Navari

The 8th edition of the American jurist, Henry Wheaton’s Elements of International Law, published in 1866, marked the full reception of legal positivism in America (see Rossi above). But Wheaton’s own 4th edition of 1846 had already become standard fare in Europe (“the foremost modern text in the diplomatic establishments of the US, Britain, France, and other European countries”: Fassbinder and Peters 2012, 1232), and it was only the beginnings of a remarkable progression. The 6th edition by W. B. Lawrence (1863) in Boston in 1855 was welcomed into European practice via indigenous translations into both French and Italian, while the 7th, issued in 1863, surpassed all previous editions in achieving global status. Reissued by Laurence (1863) with extensive notes and a biographical memoir, the 7th edition was translated into Chinese by an American protestant missionary and published at the expense of the imperial government (4 vols., Pekin 1865). It was immediately translated into Classical Chinese for a Japanese audience, and a subsequent Japanese language edition was welcomed into Korea in the 1880s, providing for the reception of modern international law in Asia. That a diplomatic text originally written in 1836 by a seemingly American novitiate and a republican should achieve such a reception in monarchical European chancelleries long enmeshed in diplomatic practice may surprise, but a simple perusal of the text provides some initial clues. Wheaton presented to European diplomats and lawyers an accessible diplomatic handbook based on European sources, recording contemporary European practice and sourced firmly in a legal tradition quite familiar to his European readers. But that it would be so widely received in alien lands is not so immediately apparent and was due to innovations he introduced into the law itself. DOI: 10.4324/9781003334927-9

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Wheaton at Home

Henry Wheaton (1785–1848) was a lawyer and an engaged publicist based in New York (he served on the convention to form a new constitution for New York in 1821 and was briefly a member of the New York State Assembly). From 1812 to 1815, he edited the National Advocate, the organ of the Republican Party, for which he mastered the neutrality codes and regularly presented the party’s view of the matter in the journal; that is, that British and French seizures were contrary to accepted, pre-Revolutionary practice. His mastery led to his service as a federal judge advocate on the matter during the War of 1812, which gave him concrete experience of its application and provided the subject of his first legal treatise—A Digest of the Law of Maritime Captures and Prizes (1815). It and his service in the marine court brought him to the attention of the officers of the Supreme Court, the Marshall Court, in its golden age. The Marshall Court (1801– 1835) delivered 80 opinions concerning international law during his tenure as court reporter, each of which he reported with care “and a profusion of annotations” (Reeves 1937, 700). As a result of his service, he was made charge d’affairs to Denmark in 1827 and was elevated to the rank of minister to Prussia in 1834 when the U.S. mission was raised to the status of a legation, where he worked tirelessly to secure a commercial agreement between the United States and the newly formed Zollverein. Wheaton’s legal training is characteristic of an ex-colonial: after graduating from Brown University with a smattering of languages, theology, and a little history, he studied domestic law privately with a Boston law firm before proceeding to Europe to complete his training. It was not unusual for those studying the law to go to Europe for part of their education, and Wheaton spent a formative year (1805) at the University of Poitiers in good progressive fashion. Poitiers had a legal faculty “whose works contributed so largely to the Napoleon Code,” just then being promulgated, which Wheaton set to and translated for American use (Lawrence 1855, xv), providing American jurisprudence with its first taste of what Rossi, above, has characterized as “legal formalism,” the studied view that what states agreed was law and that international law was a public law made and enforced by sovereign states that were lawmakers. Laurence, in the preface to his 1855 edition, notes that Wheaton was a “witness of the transition from the droit coutumier and from a system composed of the Roman civil law and of royal ordinances and local regulations, to a uniform written law,” and that he “was preparing himself to exercise an enlightened judgment on codification.” His introduction to international law was provided by the writings of James Kent, Chancellor of the New York State Court of Chancery. In 1826, Kent published the first of what would become fourteen editions of his Commentaries on American Law, the first systemized American approach

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to common law, which he based on Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England combined with American precedent (see Stychin 1993). Kent (1832, 3) had praised the “vast superiority” of the Western Christian tradition for providing the foundation for North American resilience during the revolutionary period, and he had devoted “pride of place” (Janis 1992. 38) and 200 pages of text to his emerging American formulation of international law. Joseph Story, associate judge of the Supreme Court, was another of Wheaton’s mentors—he has been described as Story’s “soul mate and protégé” (Joyce 1985, 1318). He embraced Story’s separation between private and public international law, a distinction that provided a territorial basis for resolving conflicts. Until the mid-nineteenth century, American treatises on international law, including those of Wheaton, treated the law of nations as understood by the seventeenth-century Dutch jurist, Grotius, and eighteenth-century French, Dutch, and German jurists (Vattel, Bynkershoek, and Pufendorf), as fully internalized first principles of the American legal system, whose "faithful observance … is essential to national character.” According to Kent (1832, 19), England and the United States have been equally disposed to acknowledge … the binding force of the general usage and practice of nations, and the still greater respect due to judicial decisions recognizing and enforcing the law of nations (see also Henderson above). Mark Janis’ 1992 authoritative account asserts that Wheaton’s international law “began to be fixed about the time of Grotius” (p. 211), and Renee Jeffery (2004, 81) agrees that after “the decline of Grotius’ most famous work De Jure Belli ac Pacis at the hand of Vattel … James Kent and Henry Wheaton [re]turned to Grotius” (p.49). (She also notes Grotius’ “subsequent incarnations in the works of Martin Wight and Hedley Bull”; p. 81). Wheaton and the Law

Among the European masters, Wheaton ascribed to Pufendorf a special status, as Pufendorf was the first to declare that “there is no other voluntary or positive law of nations … with a true and legal source … as the command of a superior sovereign” (Wheaton 1836, 37). Pufendorf had developed a theory of “facultative sovereignty” (Holland 2017, 144) to explain how a composite polity—in particular, the German Empire—could act as one person. Pufendorf’s argument that the state is a composite moral person whose sovereignty was defensible had exerted a considerable influence over the authors of The Federalist Papers, who were required to explain how a loose confederal America, a constitutional throw-back in the age of Absolutism, was to be conceived as a union. (Pufendorf not only provided a series of models that

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the federalists could draw upon, but he was also considered a friend of federation due to his recommendation that the German Empire cease regarding itself as a centralized state and direct its development in the direction of a “free federation”—early America considered itself such a federation.) In constructing the law’s content, he closely followed Vattel’s account of practice, supplemented by Marten’s recent treaty collection. Appearing in 1758, Vattel’s was the first work on international law to be written in the vernacular and was immediately translated into English; Benjamin Franklin had received three copies in 1775, noting in acknowledgment that “it came to us in good season when the circumstances of a rising state made it necessary to consult frequently the law of Nations,” adding that “it had been continuously in the hands of the members of our congress now sitting.”1 Its influence on Wheaton is apparent in his study of war and neutrality, in which he set out to consider “not what the law ought to be but what the law is.” Where he differed from his predecessors was in his account of the origins of a positive law of nations. Vattel had placed them in the consent of states, understood as rational propositions; Wheaton, by contrast, followed the historical trend and placed them historically. Anticipating the argument in the Historical Sketch that prefaced the first edition (pp. 22–23)2 , Wheaton made it specific in a third edition of 1845 (p. xiv), where he located the origins of the positive law of nations in the European Middle Ages, and in two specific institutions: canon law and Roman law. The canon law, whose effects were evident in the drawing together of the “Christian states of Europe” under the moral authority of the Latin Church, had been codified in the thirteenth century and guided “decisions of the Church in public as well as religious controversies.” The second was the “revival of the study of Roman law, and the adoption of this system of jurisprudence by nearly all the nations of Christendom, either as the basis of their municipal codes, or as subsidiary to the local legislation in each country.” Wheaton could not have made his point more clearly: “The international law of Christendom … the public law of Europe and of the Americas … had sprung from the European stock” (Wheaton 1836, 45). It was, moreover, an actualized law derived from earthly sources: the canon law and the Roman civil law. Wheaton also presented his public law as a product of and, indeed, evidence for a superior European civilization, beginning the trend. The President of Yale, Theodore Woolsey’s 1860 Introduction to the Study of International Law, advises that his work is “not written for lawyers, but to introduce students, especially students of history, into a science which- has

1  From Wharton’s Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, vol. 2, p. 64. 2  W heaton elaborated the Historical Sketch into a full-blown history of international law for a prize offered by the: Wheaton 1945.

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very close relations to the history of Christian states, and in general to that of civilization” (for more, see Shahabuddin 2019). Gerrit Gong’s study of the Standard of ‘Civilization’ cites Wheaton as the source of the idea that states were considered ready for inclusion into a globalizing European order on the grounds of civilizational standards. Certainly, Wheaton considered the “public law of Europe” as superior to “the usages of other branches of the human family” and rated its superiority as “glorious.” Whether intended or not, presenting the body of international law as the specific product of a European and Christian experience, and of a superior civilization, involved peripheralizing all other “foreign” legal practices (Anghie 1999). What is more certain is that Wheaton regarded the spread of a European-based international law and its practices as a natural and welcome process. In his preface to the 1855 edition, Laurence (1855) notes “in confirmation of this view” that: the more recent intercourse between the Christian nations of Europe and America and the Mohammedan and Pagan nations of Asia and Africa indicates a disposition, on the part of the latter, to renounce their peculiar international usages and adopt those of Christendom. The rights of legation have been recognized by, and reciprocally extended to, Turkey, Persia, Egypt, and the States of Barbary. The independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire have been long regarded as forming essential elements in the European balance of power, and, as such, have recently become the objects of conventional stipulations between the Christian States of Europe and that Empire, which may be considered as bringing it within the pale of the public law of the former. At the same time that he was lauding both the natural law traditions and the positive law innovations of the Old Country, he was also an American, a jurist, and a rapporteur for the Marshall Court at a time when the principles of the federation and the rights of the federation as against the states were being formulated. He had publicly supported Marshall’s judgment in the case of Ohio against the federation, in which Marshall found for the federation, but he was also a follower of Madison as a defender of state’s rights as they had been laid down in the constitution—where rights become the basis of the duties of the federal authorities to respect those rights. His legal treatise took shape accordingly: influenced by American constitutional practice and by the idea that states’ rights confer duties on others to observe those rights, his digest divided international law into three parts. After an introduction to sources, Part 2 laid out the Absolute International Rights of States; that is to say, those rights that are unconditional; Part 3 with those Rights in Peace, and Part 4 with State’s Rights in War. Nicholas Onuf (2000) perhaps overreaches the matter in considering its appearance in 1836 as conveniently dating the onset of the “conceptual

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world of liberal internationalism as a coherent project.” Wheaton shows little evidence of wanting to extend American constitutional practices to Europe or even to select parts of the British Empire. But Onuf’s judgment that Wheaton’s Elements is a “telling moment” in the history of international law is not misplaced. Nowhere before Wheaton were state’s rights made the basis of international law (as such is implicit in the idea that state’s rights impose duties on other states to honor those rights). In doing so, he did a great deal to make a liberal world order conceptually independent from developments within societies (since even non-liberal states could happily accept such a reading). It is also no doubt why Wheaton’s Elements found such a generous reception among such a diversity of legal orders as existed in Europe, not to mention outside it. It is on such grounds that we might acknowledge Onuf’s claim that “the template for a liberal legal order among states came from across the Atlantic, where liberalism found its greatest support in Constitutional practice” (Onuf 2000, 9). Some of Wheaton’s own views on the content of the law of nations may be gleaned from his stance on America’s relationship to the Zollverein, the customs union established in 1834 under Prussian leadership (a schema guided by the physiocrats on the advantages of creating a tariff-free zone in central Europe). In 1835, partly as a result, Congress had agreed to create a permanent ministry to Prussia, following the establishment of similar posts to Russia and France, and Wheaton was appointed as Envoy and Plenipotentiary to the Kingdom of Prussia with instructions to pursue a commercial treaty with the Zollverein. Wheaton was an enthusiastic free trader, following the eighteenth-century physiocrats and the German cameralists, at a time when America had high tariffs to protect its infant industries and its domestic production. At the time, America was still in disputation with Great Britain on the neutrality practices that Britain had put in place during the Napoleonic wars (and that had led to the War of 1812), in respect of which Britain was refusing a new commercial agreement with its ex-colony to replace the defunct Jay Treaty. Wheaton doggedly pursued an agreement with the Zollverein, arguing that “it would efface some of the most objectionable features of our present exaggerated tariff” and would be “the first step for a more liberal intercourse between the different nations of Europe and the United States” (Ekes 2000). He finally achieved the commercial treaty with Prussia in 1844 and bitterly regretted a provincial Congress’ failure to ratify the agreement (Lawrence 1855, lxxxvii–cx; and Anon 1856.) The political practice among states that most interested Wheaton in the 1830s (and Dana in 1866) was the balance of power and the new Great Power habit of concerting. He was an inheritor of Rousseau’s skepticism concerning an unregulated balance of power, crediting it with “the most bloody and destructive wars waged in modern times” and from whose practice “can hardly be inferred … any fixed and general principle of international

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law.” The situation since the French Revolution had scarcely improved, giving Austria, Russia, and Prussia a “perpetual pretext for interfering in the international concerns of its [Europe’s] different states” that only British dissent had prevented from becoming a principle of international law (Wheaton 1836, 86). But concerting to maintain a balance was a different matter: Referring to it as a “systematic arrangement such has been established in contemporary times for securing to different states within the same sphere of political action the undisturbed possession of their independence and existing territories” (1836, 85), it had “more than once saved Europe from universal monarchy” (Wheaton/Dana 1866, 110). In the ideological battle over “non-engagement” among the Founding Fathers, the Elements supported defensive alliances to counter-hegemonic ambitions. Wheaton’s guarded position on the balance of power, together with his liberal principles, led him to take a mixed position on the attempts of the Holy Alliance to snuff out the embers of revolutionary zeal. The principles of international law might sometimes justify interference “when the general interests of humanity are infringed by the excesses of a barbarous and despotic government” (Wheaton 1836, 91). Intervention was also justified in “the interest of the repose of Europe” (p. 92). Equally, however, every state had the right “as a distinct moral being” independently “to alter or abolish its own municipal constitution of government.” No state could “legally interfere with the exercise of this right” (p. 95). Wheaton referred the reader to President Monroe’s message to Congress of December 2, 1823, and to America’s policy of considering the de facto government as the legitimate government, the first legal statement of what would become the Estrada doctrine, repeated in all subsequent editions. But he welcomed Britain, France, and Russia agreeing to enforce a pacification of the Greek insurgency, proceeding since 1821. Here it was a case where “the general interests of humanity are infringed by a barbarous and despotic government,” and where peaceful trade was being disrupted, and countries made to suffer “from the piracy let loose by the struggle.” Wheaton faithfully records the rise to the intervention of a French expeditionary force entering the Morea and the construction of a monarchy only mildly constitutional with a convenient German prince to head the state. He expressed the principle as “Whatever a nation may lawfully defend for itself, it may defend for another people, if called upon to interpose”(p. 94; see also Heraclides and Dialla 2015). In dealing with substantive points of the law, his method has been characterized as “eclectic” (Baker 1937, 147). He would state a general principle, always referring to the ancient sources, and then consider its modern application in terms of contemporary practice, primarily among the Great Powers. Accordingly, the 1836 text reads as much like diplomatic history as legal exposition, and the practice was continued by

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later editors. The Dana edition of 1866 considered at great length the diplomacy of the Powers visa vis the Ottoman Empire, from 1840 with the defection of Mahemet Ali as leader of Egypt to the Treaty of Paris of 1856. (Dana noted several developments not available to Wheaton, mainly that permission of the Sultan was required for the intervention, and that none of the powers could “obtain an increase of territory or an exclusive influence” p.117 ). On where America fitted into a society of states of a positive and historical character, the schema that made the most sense to post-revolutionary Americans in a political context of the British Empire and a set of continental powers was presented by Alexander Hill Everett, charge d’affaires for the Netherlands, U.S. minister to Spain, and second United States Commissioner to the Great Qing Empire, who would produce a 13-page review of Wheaton’s Elements for the North American Review (XLIV) in January 1837. Everett had published “A general survey of the political situation of the several powers of the western continent” (Everett 1827), in which he related America to the “great political system of Christendom” and which he characterized in terms of a tripartite division consisting of America, the British Empire, and a “European Commonwealth,” the latter constituted by a “balance of power” that “furnished a sort of rude substitute for a common government” of which he considered Russia the leading power. He distinguished these between liberal, mixed (the British), and arbitrary (Russia, Prussia, and Austria) systems. In this account, America is not presented as “exceptional”; it is part of a single “great political system” and is at one end of a spectrum of de jure as well as de facto constitutional constructions (from liberal to mixed to arbitrary). He presented the “system,” i.e., the interactions among them, as an historical creation, in evolution since the late Middle Ages, its contemporary pattern the result of the suppression of the French Revolution and the reduction of French power that had brought Russia to pre-eminence among the continental powers. (America’s first permanent ambassadors were to Britain and France in 1801. America’s first envoys were to Russia (1809), Prussia in 1834, and Austria in 1838.) Hill’s review of Wheaton followed accordingly. He praised Wheaton for following the best treatises “most exactly” but also for adding material “written entirely in the spirit of our liberal institutions” (p.17). Wheaton Overseas

The spread of modern international law to foreign parts began in China in the 1860s. William Alexander Parsons Martin, an American Presbyterian missionary to China, translated the Lawrence edition of Elements of International Law into Chinese under the title Wanguo Gongfa [Public Law

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for Ten Thousand Nations].3 Martin was working as an interpreter to John E. Ward in Shanghai, United States Minister to China during the 1860 crisis, and in 1862, had started to translate Vattel’s The Law of Nations but was advised by Ward to choose Wheaton’s text instead.4 Robert Hart, at that time chief assistant to the inspector general of the Chinese Maritime Customs, had earlier translated 24 sections on the rights of legation, Chapter 1 of Part 3 in Wheaton’s text, for the Zongli yamen, the government body in charge of foreign policy during the late Qing (Manchu) dynasty. When the Zongli yamen in the spring of 1863 requested the American minister in Beijing, Anson Burlingame, for advice regarding a suitable text on international law for translation into Chinese, he also suggested Wheaton. Martin’s unfinished translation was consequently brought before Prince Gong and the Zongli yamen, who appointed four officials to proofread the translation and granted a sum of 500 taels for printing and publication. Martin’s translation of the Laurence edition gave Western international law a strong natural law and Christian orientation, as well as a basis in nineteenth-century European legal positivism. In Martin’s reading, natural law affirmed the universality of Christianity, identifying its precepts in turn with the “analogous rules” of the Zhou Dynasty that dealt with divided nations. In this fashion, Martin correlated Confucius’ concept of chunqiu gongfa [public law in the Spring and Autumn period], with the European idea of natural law as deployed by Grotius, which focused more on the moral rationale and principles behind the rule of law. Martin translated the term “natural law” as “xingfa,” which literally means law of human nature. Martin’s translation provided the Chinese equivalents for Western legal concepts such as sovereignty (zhuquan), right (quan), nation and state (guo); the Chinese words “manyi” and “jiaohua,” in the translation, were used as the equivalents of “barbarian” and “civilized” (Yin, Zhiquang 2016; see also Cheung and Fung 2018). Yin judges that “[t]his ecumenist attempt appears to have been broadly accepted by Chinese reformists, such as Kang Youwei, Zheng Guanying, Chen Chi and Liang Qichao.” Some European diplomats objected to Martin’s translation of international law, including Klecskowsky, then French chargé d’affaires in Peking, who criticized “this

3  Wanguo gongfa 萬國公法 (Public Law of Nations), by Henry Wheaton (Huidun 惠頓), annotated by William Beach Lawrence (Luoensi 羅恩, translated by William Alexander Parsons Martin (Ding Weiliang 丁韙良), assisted by He Shimeng (何師孟), Li Dawen (李大文), Zhang Wei (張煒), and Cao Jingrong (曹景榮). The final manuscript was proofread by Chen Qin (陳欽), Li Changhua (李常華), Fang Junshi (方濬師), and Mao Hongtu (毛鴻圖) appointed by the Zongli Yamen. 4  W heaton did not hide national American interests in his work and was thus regarded as a better choice for American trade and diplomacy in China.

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man who is going to give the Chinese an insight into our European international law” and suggested he should be “choked off.” Martin himself performed various roles in aid of spreading the law, as well as the ruder practices of European diplomacy. During ten years of general missionary service in the south China port city of Nigpo, Martin involved himself in two major events of Chinese history. First, he went on public record to advocate in four newspaper articles that the U.S. government should support the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, a large-scale revolt against the Manchu government and part of the reforming movement growing in China in the second half of the nineteenth century. Second, he participated actively in the American delegation that produced the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858, the second of the unequal treaties between China and the Western powers, which opened the entire country to traders, diplomats, and missionaries. Third, and most significantly, he was appointed in 1869 as a chief instructor and president of Tung Wen College, where the translation was used as a textbook to train Chinese diplomats. With the help of his Chinese colleagues, Martin also translated Woolsey’s Introduction to the Study of International Law (the first English version had been published in 1860 and a Chinese version was published in 1878), Johann Kaspar Bluntschli’s Das Moderne Völkerrecht der Civilisieten Staten als Rechtsbuch dargestellt (the German version was published in 1868 and a Chinese version in 1879) and William Edward Hall’s Treatise on International Law (the English version was published in 1880 and a Chinese version in 1903). When the revolution broke out in 1911, the Chinese revolutionaries were well-versed in a legal system that gave the power of international law-making to the sovereign power of the state, which affirmed the equality of all states where sovereign authority was in evidence, and which gave such sovereign powers the right and indeed the dignity of reversing “unequal treaties.” The American naval expedition of Admiral Perry to Japan in 1853, and the enforcement of the Kanagawa treaty of 1854 opening Japan to Western traders, shook the country to the core. According to a scholar of modern Japanese history, the degree of panic of the Japanese people was so enormous that we cannot imagine it now. Japan had no information of foreign countries. Foreigners had been recognized as barbarous enemies and animals. Yet those foreigners forced Japan to open up the country using their tools of civilization and announced their requirements based on international law. (Yamauchi 1996, 1) Martin’s translation was seized upon as soon as it appeared and rendered into kambun (Classical Chinese), and a commission of scholars was immediately appointed by Prince Kung on the advice of Martin to prepare a Japanese

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translation. On January 1, 1868, the new Emperor Meiji announced that the opening of Japan to foreign intercourse should henceforth be based on international law, notifying the consuls in Japan “to conduct the foreign policy according to the public law of the universe (Udai no kouhou)”, five months before the Charter Oath that formally set Japan on the road to modernization. Wheaton’s Elements became, in consequence, one of the “must-read books in the then upper echelons of Japan” (Yasuaki 2000, 38). It is generally accepted by Japanese historians that the emperor’s motive was to secure Japan’s place in a closed European circle: Japan had to become a member of the European club of international law (the “family of nations”) to be able to associate with the European nations equally. (The concept of the Family of Nations was given its clearest geographical expression in T.E. Holland’s Lectures on International Law, given annually at Oxford from 1874 to 1910. Of the opinion that “their [European] International Law, Iike many other products of their civilization, is too refined to be applicable, as a whole,” Holland identified the Family of Nations as (1) The European Powers (including their Colonies). (2) The former Colonies that had gained independence from the European Powers, e.g., the United States, Mexico, and the South and Central American Republics.(3) The Ottoman Empire, admitted under Article 7 of the Treaty of Paris, which provided that “The Sublime Porte is admitted to participate in the public law and concert of Europe.”) Outside “the family,” Japan could not deal equally with foreigners and would never, in consequence, be able to abolish the consular jurisdictions forced upon Japan. Wheaton’s reception by Meiji inaugurated the Meiji restoration, by which the only way to regain and protect Japan’s independence was to imitate Europe in almost every area, but especially through the westernization of the state system, the military, economics, and education. If the Chinese welcomed Wheaton in an ecumenical spirit, in Japan, it was more a matter of realpolitic. In 1875, Yukichi Fukuzawa, owner and editor of the Jiji Shimpo and Japan’s leading intellectual during the Meiji Era, published the best-selling “Bunmeiron no Gairyaku” (An Outline of a Theory of Civilization: Fukuzawa 2009), in which he distinguished between the ultimate and the “present” civilization, the “present civilization” being that represented in essence by the Elements and its lauding of Western civilization, along with the sought-after goals of the Meiji restoration. Seeking after “our present civilization” was required “to distinguish Japan from the others [predominately China] and to let her keep her independence.” He wrote: Namely the only way of keeping the independence of Japan cannot be found out but in civilization. My motive for recommending the Japanese to adopt Western civilization is only one. It is to give the capability of

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maintaining independence to Japan. Consequently the independence of Japan is our aim and the civilization of our nation is a means for this aim. (p.254) In the same utilitarian spirit, Fukuzawa recommended the Western idea of war as a legalized pursuit of a state’s rights, and he strongly justified war in defense of Japan’s rights, in the “present civilisation.” Japan had been contesting China’s influence over Korea for decades, rising to coercive diplomacy that had forced the conclusion of the Gangwha Treaty between Japan and Korea, anticipating the Chino–Japanese War of 1884. The coming war against China was presented by him as an action in accordance with the progress of civilization and as serving civilizational ends. When it broke out, he stated, as a matter of fact, that: Japan wanted to stimulate Korea to reform herself toward civilization. Japan hoped to help Korea's independence and for Korea to support herself. However, the Chinese opposed this movement to civilization and tried to interfere with it … Admittedly this was a war between Japan and China, but in reality [it is] a war between civilization and barbarism. Its result would decide the future of civilization. (Quoted by Yamauchi 1996, 8) (Yamauchi adds that this kind of logic was common among Japanese intellectuals and points to Uchimura Kanzou,”famous for introducing Christianity into Japan and opposed to the Russo-Japanese War as a keen pacifist later, [who] tried to justify the Chino-Japanese War in support of progress and civilization.”) Wheaton’s international law had taken root in prepared soil. Japan’s negotiations with the United States for its 1858 Treaty of Amity, the first of the unequal treaties, were conducted in Dutch because of pre-existing ties between Japan and the Netherlands, which claimed to be the birthplace of international law. (Hugo de Groot or Grotius was Dutch). Minister Enomoto Takeaki, who would serve as an adviser to General Kuroda during the course of the 1876 Ganghwa Treaty negotiations, had spent time in the Netherlands studying international law. Accordingly, when on February 10, 1876, the negotiations between the Joseon Kingdom and Japan started on Ganghwa Island, the latter was fully equipped with a knowledge of international law. Not surprisingly, the negotiations proceeded at Japan’s pace and demand. The Joseon Kingdom’s delegation head, General Sin Hon, “was not able to overcome the obvious disparity in knowledge and skill” (Lee JaeMin. 2010). The negotiations ended in two weeks, and Korea was forced to accept the 12-article treaty with Japan. The treaty anticipated Japan’s invasion of Korea in 1910 and paved the road for the 1910 annexation treaty.

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In Korea, Western international law treatises were taken as imperialising efforts and initially resisted until the 1880s. Thereafter, and notably as a result of the experience of negotiating with the Japanese, they were adopted as a matter of choice (and on the grounds of “national survival, not Korea’s appreciation of Judaeo–Christian precepts embodied in the Western law of nations”: Chai 1981, 20). Egyptians began agitating for the end of the capitulations treaties on the grounds of treaty-making rights from the 1890s, claiming the protection of Western legal codes (see Roberson 2009). The Siamese called on teachers to train them in Western law in the 1880s. Faced with intense pressure to uphold treaty agreements, Ottoman, Qing, and Siamese leaders, following the Japanese, “all initiated similar reforms to legal and administrative institutions” (see Horowitz 2004). They adapted to Western conceptions of sovereignty and claimed state’s rights, whose most generous version was Wheaton’s. The Universalization of International Law

The imperial expansions that took place toward the end of the “long nineteenth century” brought virtually all the territories of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific into a system of law that was fundamentally European and that derived in significant ways from an American reading of European thought and experience. Wheaton had raised the question: Is there a uniform law of nations? And he provided the nineteenth-century answer to it: There certainly is not the same one for all the nations and states of the world. It became an accepted principle that only European public law counted as international law. Jurist Antony Anghie, reviewing the practice, has judged that Between a sovereign European state and a non-European state that, according to the positivist jurisprudence of the time, was lacking in sovereignty … the sovereign state can do as it wishes with regard to the non-sovereign entity, which lacks the legal personality to assert any legal opposition. (Anghie1999, 3) In its most extreme form, Wheaton’s reasoning suggested that relations and transactions between the European and non-European states occurred entirely outside the realm of law (see Gong, 53–57). The lesson for polities outside Europe was to adapt to the new codes as quickly as possible and to seek their protection. If this seems like a hard lesson, it was also the case that Wheaton provided some means of redressing it. According to the Elements, rights inhered in being a state, which induced duties in other states. Accordingly, the

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recipe was clear to anyone who knew how to read it: Declare that you are a state, behave like a state, and claim states’ rights. Much of the Elements reads as an account of the nineteenth-century Great Power Diplomacy, in which, ironically, America played a mostly negligible part. Wheaton drew the majority of his law from the accepted European codes, and he and his subsequent editors followed European diplomatic practice with an attention to detail that enabled the Elements and subsequent editions of it to serve as a digest of diplomatic practice and a schoolbook of realpolitic as well as of international law. Europe returned the compliment. There were six French editions—four using the Wheaton’s own edition of 1846 and one later edition of 1874 based on the 1866 Dana version, as well an Italian edition of 1860. Its continuing relevance into the twentieth century is due to the six British editions from 1878 to the last (Berriedale Keith) edition of 1929, each of which incorporated new material while keeping much of Wheaton’s original text intact.5 All editions followed Wheaton closely in gauging the substance of the law by reference to practice rather than doctrine. In referring to the law of humanitarian warfare recently codified at the first Hague Conference of 1899, Philipson wrote “examples of [ethical and other] conduct in modern wars, as furnishing illustrations, have been added unsparingly; … they cannot, however, yet be considered as part of international law.” He also kept Wheaton’s discussion of the sources and nature of international law intact, judging that “the traditional authorities were often better expositors than contemporary writers.” References Anghie, A. (1999). Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century International Law. Harvard International Law Journal 40(1), 3–71. Anon. (1856). Life, Services and Works of Henry Wheaton. North American Review, LXXXII, 6–32. Baker, E. F. (1937). Henry Wheaton 1785–1848. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Chai, N.-Y. (1981). Korea ’s Reception and Development of International Law. In Jae Schick Pae et al. (eds.), Korean International Law. Oakland: University of California.

5  T he three Boyd editions of 1878, 1880, and 1889 cut some of the detail in Wheaton’s discussion of the Zollverein negotiations and put new material in italics to distinguish it from Wheaton’s original text. The Philipson edition of 1916 broke with that treatment and incorporated new material directly, adding new sections where appropriate. International arbitration (see Durfee below), scarcely present in the 1878 edition, received three pages in a 1904 edition and 13 pages in the 1916 edition.

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Cheung, E. and Fung, M. (2018). The Hazards of Translating Wheaton’s Elements of International Law into Chinese: Cultures of World Order Lost in Translation. In A. Carty and J. Nijman (eds.), Morality and Responsibility of Rulers: European and Chinese Origins of a Rule of Law as Justice for World Order, 316–326. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eckes, A. Jr. (2000). Opening America’s Market: U.S. Foreign Trade Policy Since 1776. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. https://www.google.gr/books/ edition/Opening_America_s_Market/yxM6hAccvN0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq Everett, A. H. (1827). America: Or, A General Survey of the Political Situation of the Several Powers of the Western Continent, with Conjectures on Their Future Prospects. Philadelphia: Carey. Fassbender, B. and Peters, A. eds. (2012) The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fukuzawa, Y. (2009) An Outline of a Theory of Civilization Translated by D. Dilworth and G. Cameron Hurst. New York: Columbia University Press. Heraclides, A. and Dialla, A. (2015). International Law and Humanitarian Intervention. In A. Heraclides and A. Dialla (eds.), Humanitarian Intervention in the Long Nineteenth Century: Setting the Precedent, 57–80. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Holland, B. (2017) The Moral Person of the State: Pufendorf, Sovereignty and Composite Polities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horowitz, R. S. (2004). International Law and State Transformation in China, Siam, and the Ottoman Empire During the Nineteenth Century. Journal of World History, 15(4), 445–486. Jae-Min, L. (2010). The Korea Herald, 29 August. http://www​.koreaherald​.com​ /view​.php​?ud​=20100907000976. Lee Jae-Min is an Associate Professor at the School of Law, Hanyang University, Seoul. Janis, M. W. (1992) American Versions of the International Law of Christendom: Kent, Wheaton, and the Grotian Tradition. Netherlands International Law Review, 39(1), 37–61. Jeffery, R. (2004). Hugo Grotius and the Invention of the “Grotian Tradition” in International Relations. PhD. St Andrews. https://research​-repository​.st​-andrews​ .ac​.uk​/ handle​/10023​/14464​?show​=full Joyce, C. (1985). The Rise of the Supreme Court Reporter: An Institutional Perspective on Marshall Court Ascendancy, Michigan Law Review, 83(5), 1291–1390. Kent, J. (1832). Commentaries on American Law (2d ed). New York: 0. Halsted. Lawrence, W. B. (1855). Introductory Remarks, Containing a notice of Mr. Wheaton’s Diplomatic Career. In W. B. Lawrence (ed.), Elements of International Law by Henry Wheaton 6th edition, xiii–clxxxv. Boston: Little Brown & Co. Lawrence, W. B. (ed.) (1863). Elements of International Law by Henry Wheaton, 7th edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. Onuf, N. (2000). Henry Wheaton and the Golden Age of International Law. International Legal Theory, 6(1), 6–9. Reeves, J. (1937). The First American Treatise on International Law. The American Journal of International Law, 31(4), 697–702.

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Roberson, B. A. (2009) Law, Power and the Expansion of International Society. In C. B.Navari (ed.), Theorising International Society, 189–208. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Shahabuddin, M. (2019). The ‘Standard of civilization’ in international Law: Intellectual perspectives from Pre-war Japan. Leiden Journal of International Law, 32(1), 13–32. Stychin, C. F. (1993), The Commentaries of Chancellor James Kent and the Development of an American Common Law.The American Journal of Legal History, 37(4), 440–463. Wheaton, H. (1836). Elements of International Law; with a Sketch of the History of the Science. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard. Wheaton, H. (1845). History of the Law of Nations in Europe and America from the Earliest Times to the Treaty of Washington, 1842. New York: Gould, Banks & Co. Wheaton, H. (1866), Elements of International law, edited, with notes, by Richard Henry Dana. London and Boston: Little Brown and Company. Yamauchi, S. (1996) Civilization and International Law in Japan During the Meiji Era (1868–1912) Hitotsubashi Journal of Law and Politics, 24, 1–25. Yasuaki, O. (2000). When Was the Law of international Society Born? Journal of the History of International Law, 2(1), 1–66. Yin, Z. 2016. Heavenly Principles? The Translation of International Law in 19th-century China and the Constitution of Universality. European Journal of International Law, 27(4) 1005–1023.

10 AMERICA AND ARBITRATION AS AN INSTITUTION OF INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY American and British Treaties from 1783 to 1871 Mary Durfee

The English School approach to the study of international affairs has considerable capacity to offer insights into how systems change and how those changes impinge on each other. The School grounds itself in the practices and norms in institutions brought on by managing relations between states and the broader world society. It does so with attention to how institutions operate over time and how those institutions shape each other. New institutions can arise as challenges facing the states demand change in how international society operates. Thus, institutions are dynamic—they come and go. This chapter focuses on the return of arbitration to international society in the “long nineteenth century” as a process that began with U.S.–Britain agreements following American independence. It was not the only way arbitration “returned” to international society. Similar practices were used during the Congresses of Vienna and Paris as part of the settlements after the Napoleonic Wars as new borders were laid—commissions with arbitral-like functions were used in Europe to settle those borders (Harris 2015, 109–13; Harris 2016). Latin American states later inserted arbitration into their regional treaties, which were the first to state that any dispute could be taken to arbitration. But in the bilateral American–British cases, arbitration went further, introducing joint commissions, early arbitration by a third party, and improved procedures. Arbitral Practices in the Past

Arbitration as a practice between polities has appeared in the past “interstate” systems, notably in ancient Greece. That culture practiced arbitration but did not have a broader system of international law (Reus-Smit, 2003). DOI: 10.4324/9781003334927-10

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Grynoviski and Hsieh (2015) argue that arbitration in that context required hierarchy among the members of intercity–state relations—Athens v Sparta. It largely disappeared in Europe after the Wars of Religion when the states of Europe were divided over religion. In the Middle Ages, the Pope was the obvious choice to arbitrate disputes between Catholic sovereigns (a quite different kind of hierarchy than in ancient Greece). But after the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia and the end of the Wars of Religion, that was not possible. In the post-Westphalia period, arbitral-like clauses in treaties were used as conflict resolution strategies, particularly by Britain. An arbitral-like clause in the Jay Treaty (1796) was essential both in eliminating the literal subordination of the United States to Britain and in reducing threats to Britain’s possessions in what is now Canada. Arbitral clauses facilitated decolonization between the two sovereign states and thus effectively brought an end to the colonial hierarchy. The other dynamic for arbitration came out of the chaos of the Napoleonic Wars. Important uses of conflict resolution strategies like joint commissions and appointing an umpire to break deadlocks in the decolonization process proved useful in rebuilding Europe and anchoring Great Power management of the continent. “In the twenty years following the Jay Treaty, arbitration had been invoked a total of 16 times under agreements involving 16 countries, often addressing what proved to be interim arrangements amid the tumult of the Napoleonic Wars” (Harris, 2015, 98). In negotiations after the Napoleonic Wars, there were 70 instances (Loc. Cit). The joint boundary commissions found in the early treaties with Britain were increasingly used after the Napoleonic Wars. While the Jay Treaty (1794) often gets credit for the first arbitral clause, the clause did not create a strong precedent. It established a five-person joint commission to hear claims on the collection of pre-revolutionary debts and the settlement of boundaries. In the end, however, a pre-existing joint boundary commission was put to the task. On the one hand, it established a third party to deal with a new problem, and clearly, the two countries had agreed to use third parties. It was, however, not arbitration in the sense of a neutral party using clear decision rules, but a case where each side might neutralize the other. The boundary commission had its successes and failures in setting the boundary. The method, first set out in the Treaty of Paris, called for surveyors to identify the boundary line and then four commissioners to accept or reject the surveyors’ report. The commissioners then each proposed a fifth person to serve as a deciding commissioner. If the commissioners could not agree on the fifth, the two names would go into a hat and one drawn (similar to a provision in the Articles of Confederation to solve disputes between two American states). The first time it was done—to set the St. Croix River section of the boundary, there was no need to draw from a hat. The man

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serving as the fifth commissioner had been a Loyalist in the recent war, but he was also related to people the Americans knew. St. Croix went fine. All of them agreed. But he voted with the British over the NE boundary (now Maine and New Brunswick), and the American commissioners refused to accept it: the minority sank the boundary deal by walking away. The NE boundary was not resolved until Britain and the United States finalized it in Webster-Ashburton 1842, agreeing on evidence from the earlier boundary commissions. Given their struggles and the long time the commissioners spent out in the woods in all kinds of weather, it is not surprising that they did not make much progress on the debt issue. The debt issue was next attempted in the Treaty of Ghent (1815), where the United States and Britain included the possibility of using a “friendly sovereign” to solve compensation to British subjects for losses of property during the American Revolution. (Ghent also included another attempt to set the NE boundary through a commission and set up another commission to settle the boundary through the rest of the Great Lakes) and further west to Lake of the Woods. They chose King William I of the Netherlands—a third party who was not a national of either state—as arbitrator. He did not follow the guidelines provided, and the arbitration failed (Carroll, 2001). (Debts were solved over time but not completed until the Claims Convention of 1853 settled things.) In later treaties, governments specified in advance who would arbitrate if necessary, rather than leaving it open-ended. Eventually, the two states negotiated an amount, and the United States paid up. Later efforts in treaties between the United States and Britain to resolve debts used the joint commissions strategy that had been used to set boundaries but with far more detailed practices. The new debt commissions took testimony on the claims, the treaties on debt problems added a firm date after which a claimant could not make a claim, and rules were established to record and evaluate evidence. These did not fail. A Weak State, Post-Colonial Tensions, and Arbitration

Independence created a distinct need to clarify and reduce conflicts over property, citizens, and borders. Early U.S. treaties with other sovereign states—France, Poland, Sweden, Spain, The Port, and Britain all included the international issues of extradition, trade, and maritime rules. Save for the Treaty of San Lorenzo (1795) with Spain; however, none of the early treaties the United States made with other states included the conflict resolution techniques found in the ones with Britain. The treaty with Spain clarified the borders between the U.S.’ and Spain’s possessions and used the joint survey of the border approach found in the 1794 Jay Treaty. In the cases of treaties with other countries, there was no border to be established with

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France or Sweden nor citizens and their many affairs to separate from old ties to Europe. It was difficult to say what kind of a “sovereign state” the United States was when it first set free of Britain. While the United States under the Articles of Confederation had tired Britain out on the field of battle and through diplomacy with France, there was almost no central government. The 1783 Treaty of Paris between them was signed by each of the 13 states after 9 of them approved the treaty. There is no mention in the treaty of “citizens” only of borders. Americans in 1783 were citizens of several states; only with the U.S. Constitution (1794) did they gain national citizenship. Even the 1794 Constitution, however, says nothing about who is a citizen— Congress has filled in details to some degree (Foner, 2019, 3). But even with Congress-made law, troubles arose. Congress allowed “naturalization” as a mode to gain citizenship; Britain’s view was that one had to be born on the soil of a country to be a citizen. That stance was one reason Britain felt justified in impressing sailors—a cause for the War of 1812 (during the larger Napoleonic Wars). The “who was a citizen of the US or a subject of Britain” topic would continue to cause problems. Not only would naturalization/impressment cause trouble, but people would “game” the system to sell goods and avoid tariffs. They would claim to be American in the United States and British when in Canada. It seems an odd omission. The American negotiators in Paris thought there would be more treaties to work out details such as citizenship after independence, but they did not happen (Hatter, 2017, 31). Rather, Britain signed bilateral treaties with other international states that had supported American independence (e.g., France, Holland), but nothing more with the Americans until Jay in 1794. Thus, Hatter (2017, 3) argues that even with treaties that set out a border, there was no real idea of how to make the new border work. This led to more Congress-made laws—one had to apply to be a citizen if not native-born—and improved methods of border control. During the American Confederation period, relatively little held the 13 states together, though they all agreed that they needed peace and trade, including with Britain. The armed forces were small, and treasuries were nearly empty. If the United States wanted to sign a treaty with another international state, 9 of the 13 states had to agree—an echo of which from the Articles of Confederation remains in the U.S. Constitution rule that a 2/3 vote is required in the Senate for the ratification of treaties. (In contrast, the Canadian national government negotiates and ratifies treaties, but if a provision encroaches on one of the constitutional powers of a province, then the province must also ratify it). Even if Britain and the United States made an agreement, the states under the Articles might not implement the terms of the agreement. At the societal level, the Revolution divided Americans

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deeply. Historian H.W. Brands calls the Revolution “America’s First Civil War” (Brands, 2021, 31). Loyalists who wanted to stay with Britain were persecuted during the Revolution, often losing property or their lives. In the Treaty of Paris, Britain pressed to protect the lives and properties of those who had remained loyal. Many states ignored the issue. Meanwhile, Indian allies were not invited to the negotiations; they fought and negotiated as they could to preserve their lives and lands. The U.S. threat to Canada was also a serious issue for Britain. At the time, many in the United States hoped the British colonies in North America would join as new states in the United States. In fact, the American Articles of Confederation contained article XI that invited any of the Canadian colonies to join the new United States (for free!)—something not offered to any other colonial possession held by a European power in the Western Hemisphere. The idea that Canadian colonies should be joined with the United States would continue to appeal to the United States for decades more, though the U.S. Constitution (1781, ratified 1782) no longer included the specific invitation to the lands that would soon be divided into Upper and Lower Canada to join the union. The idea of joining the United States and Canada reappeared after the American Civil War ended in 1865 when Senator Sumner suggested Britain could give Canada to the United States rather than pay compensation for Britain’s violation of its duties as a neutral during the American Civil War. Continuing tensions with Britain threatened to undermine the Treaty of Paris. Some U.S. states did not live up to their obligations under the treaty to return property to Loyalists. British citizens could not recover debts owed to them. As provided in customary international law, Britain responded by not executing all of its treaty obligations. Britain did not leave the western forts as provided by the Treaty of Paris, and it made recovery of debts by Americans difficult. These tensions led to deeper crises and threatened war. The Jay Treaty (1794), the first negotiated under the new U.S. Constitution, calmed the situation through methods for peaceful resolution of disputes and the first arbitration-like clause in the modern era. It assigned the debts question to a joint commission. Ultimately, the commission was never created and, instead, the parties used the joint commission already in place to settle the boundary along the St. Croix River and the N.E. boundary. It was “at hand” and still sitting. It did not succeed. Even in weakness, America as a sovereign state and Americans as individuals were a potential threat to Britain’s North American colonies. In addition to separating the United States from its empire, Britain needed to secure territories in what would soon be organized into Upper and Lower Canada from both the United States and to discourage a Revolution in Canada by proving it would protect them from their new neighbor. The United States could be torn apart by or take part in machinations from France or other

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European powers. As it turned out, the main result of the Napoleonic Wars was the massive expansion of the United States (and slavery) through the Louisiana Purchase (3 cents an acre/7 cents a hectare). The United States also bought Florida from Spain (who had bought it from France). That territory stretched far to the west. American citizens might also take action on their own against their neighbors to the north. That became a reality when Americans sought to aid the rebels in the Canadian Rebellion of 1837/38, even though President Van Buren had announced a policy of neutrality and forbade Americans from aiding the rebels (Dagenais and Maudit, 2019). In these complex circumstances, international law and the powerful tool of a treaty came to the rescue for Britain and the United States. Exchanging assurances by treaty made more sense than exchanging bullets with both parties (Kupchan, 2010). Accommodation was a rational strategic choice for Britain, given its broader security concerns and global presence. It was a good choice for the weaker party, too. The United States expected to expand across North America, and so did the Canadians (Shoalts, 2017). Webster–Ashburton (1842) prevented war by finally settling the NE boundary line. A consequence of Anglo– American cooperation was that the previously quite successful balance of power diplomacy of the tribes did not work well as French and Spanish presence declined. Cultural Sources of Conflict Resolution

The cultural foundations for the emergence of arbitration in the very small society of the United States–Britain/Canada were several and assisted in solving mutual problems. The two states spoke the same language and, among the elite at least, knew the same history—including the ancient examples of arbitration from Greece and Rome. In addition, there was a long European practice already of treaties and customary international law to guide them. The new Americans were particularly keen to show they understood the rules of international law. George Washington knew the 1625 work on international law by Grotius, De Juri Belli ac Pacis. In 1821, John Adams admonished a son to study the Common Law and to “Search upon Puffendorf and Grotius,” two jurists who were still the two main sources of international law at the beginning of the nineteenth century (John Adams Papers, 1821). They shared a legal culture and, crucially, the Common Law tradition where precedents of judges become part of the law. George Washington, however, was quite concerned about the American inability to live up to its international obligations and pressed for considerable change in this area for the new Constitution (Totten, 2012). The U.S. Constitution made it clear that treaties were part of American law. In U.S. Constitutional practice, international law is treated as part of the Common

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Law, making international law part of U.S. law (Henkin, 1984). Art 3, Section 2 of the Constitution says: The judicial Power shall extend to all cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority shall be the supreme law of the land. That provision means treaties are taken very seriously—and the Senate and many Americans are distrustful of the entire idea of treaties. Over time, the two developed and improved on many conflict resolution strategies, some moving toward the actual use of a prepared joint request to a third party for decision or to joint commissions and commissions with an umpire. Each treaty between the two channeled future conflicts into more, but smaller, streams. Even if a particular disagreement was a challenge to solve, smaller streams for disputes meant the disagreement was not likely to upset all the other areas of calm. Solving smaller disputes deepened the principle of reciprocity and built a shared understanding of the rules of the game between states. Conflict Resolution through Treaties with Britain, 1783–1871

The United States and Britain negotiated 16 treaties between 1783 and 1871 that are still relevant to United States–Canadian relations, of which 14 were put into force (see List of Treaties in references). Table 10.1 compares conflict resolution strategies across these agreements. After the name and date is a Yes or No to having a dispute settlement article. “Type” refers to what the resolution method(s) is/are and a short explanation: a mixed commission, with or without an umpire, a third party specifically identified in case commissioners failed to agree, arbitration, and mixed courts. At Ghent, ending the American aspect of the Napoleonic Wars (War of 1812), the two countries recognized the need for a consul to assist citizens and firms abroad. This promoted commercial activity and aided citizens. “Directed To” indicates if the provision(s) sought to manage private individuals/firms, subnational governments, or the state contracting parties alone. This has significance to the structure of international rules that had pacifying effects among the citizenry. “Third party” provides more specifics on who would serve as the arbitrator. “Other” indicates whether the agreement was pursuant to an earlier one or other relevant points on its fate or operation. It shows that older agreements were linked to the newer ones, thus deepening and reinforcing institutionalization of the “pacific settlement of disputes” within international society. Two treaties on the chart do not fit the other examples of conflict resolution: Rush–Bagot and Clayton–Bulwer. These are included because they

Creation of a new sovereign state. Relevant to other sovereign states-bilateral Treaties with states who helped the United States. State, individuals/ firms

Policy Change: Y/N Decolonization Fundamental change by the treaty. Ended a war by decolonization No other conflict resolution devices. Y Commissions to settle boundaries and issues of unpaid debts by individuals, extradition. Not set up. Used the boundary commission

Treaty of Paris, 1783

Treaty NE boundary/ Unsolved boundary Boundary Passamaquody Bay commission solved Islands, 1802 St. Croix, but not NE boundary, thus this effort

Jay Treaty, 1794

Directed To

Conflict Resolution Type Mechanism Yes/No

Treaty and Date

TABLE 10.1 Conflict Resolution in U.S.–Great Britain Treaties 1783–1871

Soup to nuts topics: boundary, fishing, debts, protect/ forgive people who fought for Britain or were in land held by Br forces.

Other

(Continued)

Y. Commissioners The solution to finding the fifth select a fifth member is similar member by to a provision in agreement or lot. the Articles of Confederation Often cited as a return to arbitration, but a weak example. Not ratified

Third Party?

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States parties, Consuls may be potential exchanged to help commercial firms. with commercial affairs.

N/Y? Consuls limit commercial conflict

Commerce Treaty, 1815

States Parties

Commissions to settle boundary End war with the United States

An effort to achieve what 1802 sought

1806. (Monroe– Pinkney) Treaty to settle the NE boundary and debts

Directed To

Treaty of Ghent, 1814 Y

Conflict Resolution Type Mechanism Yes/No

Treaty and Date

TABLE 10.1 (Continued)

Y, Friendly sovereign if commissioners can’t agree

Third Party?

(Continued)

Jefferson refused even to submit it to Senate because no action on impressment of American sailors Commissioners used the 1802 and 1806 treaties as a basis. Sought external legal advice. Also, the failed debt problem referred to arbitration by King of Netherlands. Failed. Solved later by negotiations Pursuant to Ghent

Other

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1818 (sometimes called a Fishing Agreement)

Y. (Much of it was devoted to freedom to fish off Newfound-land/ Labrador) Free navigation in lands west of the Stoney (Rocky) mountains Compensation for losses in War of 1812, including for slaves

Mixed strategies by Individuals in the Dominions and topic the United States Extending a time frame. Proactive effort to limit conflict over Pacific Northwest for a specified number of years Third-party arbitration on the value of lost slaves compensation

(Continued)

Lesson learned from N, customary War of 1812. Idea practice of prior proposed by the informed consent United States. when exceptions Parties use MOUs needed for significant exceptions, most recently after 9/11 Friendly Sovereign Pursuant to Ghent, but nothing had to decide on been done on these slaves (Tsar of topics. Russia chosen)

States Parties

Y, in a way—highly Demilitarization of 4 International unlikely there Great Lakes and will be a violent Lake Champlain. militarized interaction.

Rush–Bagot, 1817

Other

Third Party?

Directed To

Conflict Resolution Type Mechanism Yes/No

Treaty and Date

TABLE 10.1 (Continued)

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Y States Parties, subnational governments. The United States paid MA and ME for accepting treaty; Britain required NB to give up a defense fund that then went to the United States If the two sides could not agree on value of two firms’ properties, all the rest of the treaty would still be in force. See “Settlement” below. Individuals, firms. Post Officers

Commissions Y Mostly on boundary between New Brunswick and Maine/MA Also a promise to do joint naval efforts to end African Slave Trade

N. Boundaries, free navigation, etc.

N Early managerial treaty to facilitate posts.

Webster–Ashburton, 1842

Oregon Treaty, 1846 Formal name:

Postal Convention, 1848

Third Party?

Directed To

Conflict Resolution Type Mechanism Yes/No

Treaty and Date

TABLE 10.1 (Continued)

(Continued)

Ultimately led to the International Postal Union, an early international organization.

Pursuant to 1783, 1814, 1817, 1818

Other

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Regional Mixed Courts with Judges and Arbitrators

Y

Y Suppression of the African Slave Trade, 1862 + annexes (Lyon–Seward Treaty)

Claims Convention, 1853

If the United States makes a deal to build a canal through Nicaragua, canal must be free and open, including to warships even in the event of hostilities. Commission a

Conflict Resolution Type Mechanism Yes/No

Clayton–Bulwer, 1850 Na NOT Directed to Dominions In Canada

Treaty and Date

TABLE 10.1 (Continued)

a

Third Party?

Other

(Continued)

Both the United States and Britain are to use their Good Offices to develop treaties in Central America (U.S. dominance in Latin America a concern) States parties, Y, if commissioners Pursuant to Treaty of Paris for individuals/ can agree, they compensation of firms may appoint an private losses umpire arbitrator Yes. Judges looked Selection methods set Any merchant ship in text at evidence. carrying slaves In the event of from Africa. Only disagreement warships could arbitrators would take a ship in be called in. on suspicion of slaving.

States

Directed To

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Settlement of the Claims of the Hudson Bay and Puget’s Sound Agricultural Companies, 1863 Treaty of Amity Washington, 1871

Treaty and Date

TABLE 10.1 (Continued)

Y

Y

Directed To

Applied to the two Commissioners to firms. State of decide the value Washington of the two firms’ requested the properties in the solution. United States (Washington State) States Parties, Multiple subnational commissions, government, arbitration individuals Esp important: 5-person arbitration board for Alabama and other ships

Conflict Resolution Type Mechanism Yes/No Pursuant to the Oregon Treaty

Yes. Arbitrator, if needed: King of Italy

Rules for neutrals Y, crucial result adopted as was the Alabama international rules Claims. Solved by others. using guidance Bid for neutrality from the two claims: 1 by the nations on duties United States, of neutrals at sea. 1 by Great Britain, Other provisions King of Italy, addressed less President of Swiss weighty matters. Confederation, and Emperor of Brazil

Other

Third Party?

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suggest (1) the likely importance of deepening peace along the United States– Canada border through disarmament and (2) a peaceful way for Britain and the United States to maintain good relations with each other while competing for influence in Latin America. The 1817 Rush–Bagot naval disarmament agreement demilitarized the four international Great Lakes and Lake Champlain and thus dramatically reduced the prospect of war. Clayton– Bulwer is an exception to show the rule. It illustrates how their practices of conflict resolution allowed both to be active in Latin America (to protect their interests) and to spread ideas for the peaceful resolution of disputes. The agreement, for example, included a promise to use their “good offices” to help newly created Central American states make trade and naval basing agreements—self-interest, to be sure, but also aimed at peaceful competition. Creating Trust through Decolonization Treaties

Boundary treaties, a special kind of treaty, set the physical “where” of a sovereign state. When other states create a new state through a treaty, the primary institution of international law, often with great powers acting in concert, literally constitutes a new sovereign. The boundary is thus the crucial material foundation for participation in international society. A definite boundary also reduces the threat of war. For example, in the twentieth century, a de jure border reduced the likelihood of a militarized interstate dispute by 90% (Gibler and Owsiac, 2018, 1861). Unclear borders, in contrast, could and did produce conflict in the United States–British relationship as happened in the forests of Maine and New Brunswick in the late 1830s. In that case, the United States and Britain quickly agreed to negotiate rather than see more violence. The Webster–Ashburton Agreement of 1842 was the result. Figuring out the U.S.–Canada border was not easy. Treaties set out the U.S.–Canada border in general terms (e.g., turn north at this highlands, draw the line through the middle of a lake) but finding the line and mapping it well enough to delineate it and make it “real” was quite a different matter. At first, the United States and Britain set up joint surveys where the two parties of surveyors had to agree on where the border was, and then the governments could officially accept their advice. Agreement on the “where” often eluded the men marking the line due to unclear treaty language based on sketchy maps. The Jay Treaty set up a conflict resolution mechanism that almost worked and bore a very strong similarity to a provision in the Articles of Confederation on how to solve a dispute between two member states. As noted above, each side chose two commissioners to go with the surveyors; each side proposed a fifth, and the method failed. The United States did not accept the decision, and parts of the northeast border remained unclear and thus open to citizen action to establish the boundary by force or by use of the

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disputed area for economic gain. The boundary was eventually corrected via the Webster–Ashburton agreement of 1842. The failure of this first method led the parties to the use of mutually agreed third parties of a third state (Carroll, 2001, 14–19). Boundaries, however, were not the only issue as the United States separated into its new sovereign lands. Much else had to be “decolonized.” The Treaty of Ghent (1815) ended the War of 1812 between the United States and Canada. It used a commission to clarify more of the border but adjusted the approach from Jay by adding an umpire if they could not agree. Commissions, charged with settling debts between private individuals and firms for losses during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, took claims and reviewed evidence and set out payments. Negotiators for the boundary work sought legal advice from an outsider on their own initiative. Rush–Bagot (1817) demilitarized the four international Great Lakes. Canada and the United States still request permission from the other when, for example, a U.S. Navy ship needs to sail to a reunion of Navy veterans. It is one cause of the very deep peace between the two countries, so deep that when the U.S. Coast Guard wanted to start live fire exercises on Superior after 9/11, Canada agreed to the exception, but Americans wrote their governors and senators. The Coast Guard (not a NAVY force, even, as provided in the treaty) stopped the plan. It is doubtful the citizens who wrote their elected officials knew their free rights to navigation are because of the Paris and Jay treaties or that they faced no armed exercises due to Rush–Bagot. The 1818 (Fishing) Treaty had a provision on solving a dispute on compensation to slaveholders for slaves who escaped to Canada or had left with British troops after the War of 1812. It was left to a “friendly sovereign to decide the issue. In 1822, the Czar of Russia ruled largely in favor of the US that compensation was required” (Ostdiek and Witt 2019). After initial reluctance by Britain to execute the decision, the two wrote a new treaty on how the transaction would work, and Britain paid. The Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842 likely prevented war. Clashes between citizens/subjects fighting over boundaries and rights between Maine/Massachusetts and New Brunswick in the 1837–1842 period threatened to destabilize the relationship between the United States and Britain (Carroll, 2001; Stevens, 1989). The boundary had been set by a commission, but the United States “lost” territory its citizens expected to get. Citizens on both sides had built their very own “war chests.” The two countries devised a clever, if rather Rube Goldberg-like, solution to mollify hot local tempers, limit resources that could fuel more violence, and preserve national honor. The federal government sent funds to the two unhappy U.S. states as thanks for accepting the treaty. Meanwhile, a fund set up by New Brunswick subjects to support their claims, by force if needed, was turned over to Britain. Britain then gave it to the U.S government.

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The 1846, Oregon Treaty settled the border to the NW just as Americans were starting to arrive to settle the area. As the two learned from the NE boundary, unclear lines make for local trouble and violence. The 1853 Claims Convention settled disputes over payments for losses from past fighting and included the possibility of third party intervention. Even in the midst of the American Civil War, Britain and the United States wrote treaties. The 1862 Suppression of the African Slave Trade set up mixed regional courts to review actions by Union and British naval vessels who seized ships on the grounds they were slave ships—there were judges to hear the evidence and arbitrators if the judges could not reach a decision. In this case, at last, Britain could finally get the U.S. government to join them in the suppression of the international slave trade (Brands, 2021). The 1863 treaty, Settlement of the Claims of the Hudson Bay and Puget’s Sound Agriculture Companies, came pursuant to the 1846 Oregon Treaty. The issue of the Agricultural Companies was left unsolved in the Oregon Treaty, with the proviso that, eventually, the firms might be bought out. The firms overstated the value of their properties. The solution came from a commission to evaluate the value of the assets. The commission greatly reduced the compensation required. There was, in the treaty, however, a provision for the King of Italy to serve as the arbitrator should the commissioners fail to decide on a fair price for the properties of the two firms. The Treaty of Amity/Washington (1871) is best known for “The Alabama Claims” arbitration. It resolved through arbitration the exceptionally serious issue of whether Britain had failed in its duties as a neutral by letting its shipyards build Confederate Navy ships. The Confederate ships built there were claimed to be commercial vessels. The ships were never armed in Britain, and the British government did inspect the ships to see if something was amiss but did not rule there was a problem (Merli, 2004). The ships’ actions once at sea caused considerable losses to the union. Soon after the arbitral decision, Britain wrote the then-largest check from one nation to another for $15.5 million, and the receipt for the check hangs in the Prime Minister’s office to this day (King and Graham, 1996). The 1871 Treaty did more than settle the claims over neutral duties. Forty-four Articles set up commissions to resolve conflicts over the following situations: 1. Private claims by individuals or corporations by Americans against Britain or British subjects against Americans during the American Civil War. 2 . Mutual fishing rights and a commission if there were arguments over those rights by individuals. As the benefits would benefit Americans more than subjects in Canada, the United States agreed to pay Britain the difference, and the commissioners for fishing would set the amount. There was a means to appeal the decision.

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3. Clarification/reassertion of rights of both British subjects in Canada and American citizens to navigate rivers and visit ports. Both sides were to urge the opening of canals to private and subnational political units that owned or managed them. 4. The Dominion and New Brunswick would be urged not to put duties on lumber—a version of the softwood lumber dispute has been around for quite a while. 5. Newfound-land (not yet a province) would be urged not to put duties on American goods if the United States reciprocated. But if either side did not, it would not impair the treaty. (That is, the rest of the treaty would hold except on this issue, where they would continue to agree to disagree.) 6. The remaining Oregon boundary issues went to arbitration by the Emperor of Germany, whose decision would be final. Articles detailed the process. From the usual platitudes about wanting everlasting peace in treaty preambles starting with the Treaty of Paris, they went to the 1871 Treaty of Washington that yielded an outright apology by one side. Article 1 began with Great Britain expressing “regret” that Alabama left Britain’s dockyards and sank American shipping. In the hierarchy of words used to say “sorry” in international law, “regret” is the strongest and most solemn. The treaty then created an arbitral commission consisting of five arbitrators for the Alabama Claims: one from the United States, one from Britain, and then the King of Italy, the President of the Swiss Confederation, and the Emperor of Brazil. Should one of the third parties die or need to leave the process, then the King of Sweden and Norway would serve (and did). It was a thoughtful set of third parties: A European monarch, a non-monarchical leader from a state with a history of international neutrality, and a monarch from a powerful state in the New World (Merli, 2004, p. 3). The result led to compensation for the United States and clearer rules on the duties of neutrals. From Arbitration to Institution

Fundamental change in a primary institution should be rare, as such changes are likely driven by large changes in both domestic and international societies, driven by novel challenges like finding a “new world,” or losing a world, or adjusting to massive environmental change. The development of derivative institutions, such as arbitration in relation to diplomacy, is much more common as part of the historical development of diplomatic technique. What is noteworthy is their further development into secondary institutions, that is, organizations with rules and defined procedures. Spandler (2015) has suggested “using the criterion of specificity to differentiate primary and

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secondary institutions, as it provides for a distinction that is substantial rather than formal.” In the case of arbitration, we can see a steady development of the technique itself, followed by its spread, and the beginnings of an organization or secondary institution in Buzan’s (2004) terms. Procedures for international arbitration that had been in development from Jay through the Crimean War to the Washington Treaty were adopted in 1875 by the newly created, private Institut de Droit International. Peru, Chile, and Colombia had already agreed to a general arbitration treaty, thus beginning a different regional context for arbitration. Peru proposed a conference on arbitration to replace war as a means for the settlement of disputes in 1864. The United States held a conference in 1889 to discuss a general treaty on arbitration between all independent states in North and South America (Moore, 1903). The 1899 Convention on the Pacific Settlements of Disputes was a direct result of international society’s experience with war and the hope among people and organizations for peace. It led to the creation of the Permanent Court of International Arbitration. Harris (2016) argues that the peace/end-to-war movements that arose in public in many countries were not relevant to the early arbitrations. The success of arbitrations, however, did encourage the peace movements. The treaties between the United States and Britain demonstrated how to do arbitration; and its widespread use in the early nineteenth century after the Napoleonic Wars continued its expansion. Partly with social movement support, international states created the Permanent Court of International Arbitration via the Convention on the Pacific Settlement of Disputes (1899). The PCIA was a new secondary institution within the world of states and added a boost to the peace movements that sought an end to war. It is now called the Permanent Court of Arbitration and handles both the original state-to-state type cases and ones that involve state entities, international organizations, and private parties. The PCIA’s modern incarnation as the PCA is remarkable for the extension of its use to non-state actors. Other modern agreements, especially in trade and maritime affairs, offer arbitration, including mixed arbitration between states and non-state actors. The PCIA/PCA even has a lovely “bricks and mortar” physical manifestation of its institutionalization in The Hague. It is not only a secondary institution of international but also of world society. An early PCIA case that had its roots in the Jay Treaty was the Cayuga Indians case. Treaties with the Indigenous tribes of North America were rarely observed, but the special legal status of tribes allowed litigation of Indian rights under agreements between the United States and Britain. The Jay Treaty provided compensation to the Cayuga Indians over lost territory. One group lived in the United States and one in Canada. Only the Cayugas living in the United States got the money. The rights of the Canadian Cayugas to a share of the money were resolved and restored by the PCIA in the Cayuga Indians

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case. More recently, however, Indian rights under Jay on both sides of the border have been violated by new rules after 9/11; see Boos, 2019). Conclusion

Considerable innovation in conflict resolution, especially arbitration, took place in the short distance between 1783 and 1871. Other than ending war and launching the United States, there were no conflict resolution methods in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, but by 1871, matters of state security and honor had been arbitrated successfully. The return of arbitration between states as a regular norm and practice through the “small world” of the bilateral Britain/Canada–U.S. relations provided security for the United States and Canada (though not for Indigenous Peoples). Britain and the other victors in the Napoleonic Wars added practices of conflict resolution to the post-war settlements, including arbitration, and thus multilateralized the renewed international practices. Arbitration lies between diplomacy and law and between world society and international society. Arbitration is closer to international law in its inspiration and results than mediation, yet less specific than going to an international court. In arbitration, the decision affects the parties, but not other states, even if it alerts others with similar problems to how a future arbitration might go. At the International Court of Justice, a decision can make the law applicable to all states. In this sense, arbitration is “safer” for states to use than courts relative to solving problems with little risk of sovereignty. Arbitration’s logic as a conflict resolution strategy has become part of international and world society. Modern conventions, including the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, have arbitral clauses. In fact, parties must choose a preferred method of dispute resolution (Article 287(3) of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea). If a state fails to choose, it will have its disputes sent to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. There are procedures that facilitate arbitration between individuals or firms and states in the realm of trade and finance. NAFTA had an investor-state arbitration system. The E.U. has a Convention on International Commercial Arbitration. In sum, states, firms, and NGOs have built the practice into other treaties and into other international organizations. References Avalon Project. https://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu ​/subject ​_ menus​/multimen​.asp Brands, H. (2021). Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution. New York: Doubleday. Boos, F. (2019). The History of the Jay Treaty, and its Significance to Cross-Border Mobility and Security for Indigenous Peoples in the North American Northern

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Borderlands and Beyond. In D. R. Menenzes and H. Nicol, eds. The North American Arctic, 35–66. London: UCL Press. Carroll, F. M. (2001). A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the CanadianAmerican Boundary, 1783–1842. Austin: University of Texas Press. Dagenais, M., & Mauduit, J., eds. (2019). Introduction. In Revolutions Across Borders, 3–24. Montreal: McGill-Queens. Foner, E. (2019) Give Me Liberty: an American History. 6th edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Gibler, D. M., & Owsiak, A. P. (2018). Democracy and the Settlement of International Borders, 1919 to 2001. The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 62(9), 1847–1875. https://doi​.org ​/10​.1177​/0022002717708599 Grynaviski, E., & Hsieh, A. (2015). Hierarchy and Judicial Institutions: Arbitration and Ideology in the Hellenistic World. International Organization, 69(3), 697– 729. https://doi​.org​/10​.1017​/S0020818315000090 Harris, S. (2015). Between Law and Diplomacy: International Dispute Resolution in the Long 19th Century. Davis CA: University of California. http://www​ .steveharris​.net ​/research​.html, Harris, S. (2016). The Global Construction of International Law in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of Arbitration. Journal of World History, 27(2), 303–325. https://doi​.org ​/10​.1353​/jwh​. 2016​.0092 Hatter, L. (2017). Citizens of Convenience: The Imperial Origins of American Nationhood on the U.S. Canada Border. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Henkin, L. (1984). International Law as Law in the United States. Michigan Law Review, 82(5/6), 1555–1569. https://doi​.org ​/10​. 2307​/1288495 John Adams Papers. https://founders​.archives​.gov​/documents​/99​- 03​- 02​-3989 King, H. T., & Graham, J. D. (1996). Origins of Modern International Arbitration. Dispute Resolution Journal, 51(1), 42–53. Kupchan, C. A. (2010) How Enemies Become Friends. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Merli, F. J. (2004). The Alabama, British Neutrality, and the American Civil War, ed. D. M. Fahey. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Moore, G. E. (1903) Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ostdiek, B., & Witt, J. F. (2019). The Czar and the Slaves: Two Puzzles in the History of International Arbitration. The American Journal of International Law, 113(3), 535–567. https://doi​.org ​/10​.1017​/ajil​. 2019​. 23 Reus-Smit, C. (2003). The Constitutional Structure of International Society and the Nature of Fundamental Institutions. International Organization, 51(4), 555– 589. https://doi​.org​/10​.1162​/002081897550456 Shoalts, A. (2017). A History of Canada In Ten Maps. Toronto: Penguin. Stevens, K. R. (1989). Border Diplomacy: The Caroline and McLeod Affairs in AngloAmerican-Canadian Relations, 1837–1842. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama. Spandler, K. (2015). The Political International Society: Change in Primary and Secondary Institutions. Review of International Studies, 41(3), 601–622. https:// doi​.org​/10​.1017​/S026021051400045X Totten, R. J. (2012). Security, Two Diplomacies, and the Formation of the U.S. Constitution: Review, Interpretation, and New Directions for the Study of the Early American Period. Diplomatic History, 36(1), 77–117. https://doi​.org​/10​ .1111​/j​.1467​-7709​. 2011​.01011.x

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List of Treaties In general for treaties still in force, see: Treaties in Force: US Department of State, Treaties in Force. https://www​.state​.gov​/treaties​-in​-force/ Canada’s website is https://www​.canada​.ca ​/en ​/department​-finance​/programs​/tax​-policy​/tax​-treaties​/ in​-force​.html Treaty of Paris. (1783). https://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu ​/18th​_ century​/paris​.asp Jay Treaty. (1794). https://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu​/18th​_ century​/jay​.asp Treaty on NE Boundary. (1803). https://founders​.archives​.gov​/documents​/ Jefferson​ /01​- 41​- 02​- 0443 Monroe-Pinkney on NE Boundary. (1806). American State Papers: Foreign Relations, v. 3, 147–151. Treaty of Ghent. (1814). https://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu​/19th​_ century​/ghent​.asp Rush-Bagot Agreement. (1817). https://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu​/19th​_century​/conv1817​.asp Treaty on Fishing. (1818). https://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu​/19th​_ century​/conv1818​.asp Webster-Ashburton. (1842). https://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu​/19th​_ century​/ br​-1842​.asp Oregon Treaty. (1846). https://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu​/19th​_ century​/ br​-1846​.asp Postal Convention. (1848). https://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu​/19th​_ century​/ br1848​.asp Clayton-Bulwer. (1848). https://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu​/19th​_ century​/ br1848​.asp Claims Convention. (1853). https://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu​/19th​_ century​/ br1853​.asp Suppression of Slave Trade. (1862). https://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu​/19th​_ century​/ br 1862​.asp Settlement of Claims. (1864) (from Oregon Treaty). https://avalon​.law​.yale​.edu​/19th​ _century​/ br1864​.asp Treaty of Amity (Washington Treaty). (1871). https://history​.state​.gov​/ historical documents​/frus1873p2v3​/d84

11 THE UNITED STATES AS A GREAT POWER The Nineteenth-Century Acceptance of Rank David Clinton

Among the several means identified by Hedley Bull of maintaining order in international society is the institution of the “Great Power,” a designation for a comparatively small category of states bearing special rights and obligations, the prudent exercise of which can promote more international order than would, arguably, be present if the institution did not exist. It is the thesis of this chapter that the nineteenth century brought the United States into the rank of Great Powers, both in the capacities it possessed, absolutely and in comparison with other members of the society of states, and in the acceptance by the American government of the accuracy and legitimacy of this conception of the role that the United States played in the world. This development was not a smooth or unbroken one, however; it included stretches of time in which the American self-image appeared static, and it concluded with a rush of change at the very end of the period under consideration (1815–1914). Ironically, in the view of those who might understandably view the designation of “Great Power” as something that rising powers scratch and claw to gain and current holders of the title resist according to newcomers, it seems that the European Great Powers showed themselves willing to admit the United States to the club before the American government and public opinion were ready to take a leading part. America as a Great Power?

Hedley Bull’s classic study The Anarchical Society, an analytical work rather than a historical one, sought to uncover the sources of order in international relations. Bull observed that, in international life, as in all social life, order “is maintained by a sense of common interests” (Bull 1977, 4–5, DOI: 10.4324/9781003334927-11

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53). Both the preservation of these common interests and challenges to these common interests rely on power, and therefore, the holders of the greatest power in international affairs—the Great Powers—are simultaneously the most difficult problem for international order and the necessary upholders of international order. Thus, the first requirement for membership in this most exclusive club is the possession of power, particularly, military power, roughly equal to that held by other Great Powers and significantly surpassed by no powers. Great-Power status involves the sheer capability to undertake certain actions of more than a common far-reaching consequence, but it also assumes the acceptance of a set of (perhaps unstated but nevertheless widely understood) norms governing the uses to which such capabilities are to be put. The existence of commonly recognized “rights” and “duties” presupposes a shared framework of beliefs within which the exercise of such rights and the fulfillment of such duties can be observed. In Bull’s formulation, Great Powers are “recognized by others to have, and conceived by their own leaders and peoples to have, certain special rights and duties.” The concern of this chapter is both the acceptance by other members of international society that a state has clambered into the ranks of the Great Powers and the willingness of American political leaders to avow that their country has taken on the mantle of “Great Power-dom” and that it is right for it to do so. In other words, did the nineteenth century see American political, diplomatic, and military leaders accord legitimacy to the self-identification of the United States as a Great Power, with all the duties, and not simply the privileges, that in the general conception of the society of states accompanied such a status? And in particular, did the American government and the American people accept that one role of a Great Power consists in its willingness to concert its policy with the policies of other Great Powers in collectively setting out rules governing international society? To put the question another way, is there evidence that in the nineteenth century the United States passed from the attainment of the status of a “Great Power” to a readiness to join with other Great Powers in performing the task of “Great Power management”? A claim to be considered a Great Power would have been viewed as absurd at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Even when it became plausible as a matter of sheer capabilities, those who made American foreign policy did not seek it. Great-Power rank in the full sense in which Bull describes it became pronounced only during the McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt administrations. It is to those years that most attention will be paid here, despite the undoubted fact that events around 1900 had precursors in earlier eras, and decisions taken at this time necessarily had effects during the Taft and Wilson administrations in the final years before 1914. The story to be told here is thus, first, one of the increases in American “possession goals”—that is, the expansion of American territory and

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influence, at first within the Western Hemisphere and eventually beyond it— but eventually also one of the rise of American “milieu goals,” as reflected in actions by the United States to coordinate its actions with its fellow Great Powers and to broach initiatives (not simply to follow the lead of others) in advancing certain conceptions of the norms of international life that, in the view of the American government, would redound to the benefit of international society as a whole (Wolfers 1962, 73–77). Acceptance of a part to play in the “primary institution” of Great-Power management through participation in multilateral conferences, and the assumption of a role of leadership in them, marked the transformation of the United States from a marginal power to a great one. America’s Power Possession Goals

The account of the rise of the United States to the ranks of the Great Powers, as measured by territorial and other indicators of the possession of power— impressively rapid by world-historical standards—is an oft-told tale. It attracted the notice, and occasionally the alarm, of the Great Powers of the Old World. Yet along the way, Washington encountered a number of the assumptions and informal norms associated with the role of Great Powers in the European-derived society of states. The most basic of these assumptions was the necessity of some degree of power in order to be a participant in the hierarchy-in-anarchy that was the society of states. An appreciable amount of power was required for any government wishing to be accepted by others as capable of effectively ruling its territory and people, and as a consequence, reliably carrying out its commitments to other states. A large part of the case made in The Federalist in favor of the adoption of the Constitution in 1787–1788 was the indictment of the Articles of Confederation for failing to meet this test of effectively acting and speaking for the society that the Government of the United States claimed to represent (Rossiter 2003). Among the conditions of success in this American quest to be taken seriously in international relations were the attitude taken and the power wielded by other states in the society of states already in existence at the outset of the existence of a new country that had declared its “full Power to levy War, conclude peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.” Although this list of commonly accepted rights and duties of states indicates that American leaders were familiar with the institutions of international society, it approaches them from the point of view of a weak and marginal member of the society of states, and it is far from adopting the self-image of one of the Great Powers responsible for managing that society. That change would come later, based on developments both material and ideational.

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Sometimes accompanied by war, always concluded by treaty, never assisted by formal allies, the extension of territory and the power that came with territory had proceeded through this politically defined nineteenth century. Following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which preceded the period under consideration, the United States had bought the Florida Territory from Spain in 1821; annexed the independent Republic of Texas in 1845; occupied through treaty with Britain the Oregon Territory in 1846; conquered the Mexican territories of upper California, and what became the states of Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico in 1848; secured from Mexico the Gadsden Purchase in 1853; and paid to Russia $7.2 million for the enormous landmass of Alaska in 1867. The acquisition of these various territories (and the accompanying growth in the American economy) in the space of less than half a century produced a radiating influence that extended beyond its formal boundaries and gave the United States an informal but nonetheless real status on the ladder that led up to recognition as a Great Power. A mark of this rising status would be the 1845 treaty between the United States and the Central American country of New Granada (roughly corresponding to present-day Colombia), under which Bogota guaranteed American citizens the same tax and regulatory treatment as Granadians in Granadian ports and any roads or canal that might be constructed across New Granada, in return for which the United States took on the seemingly considerable commitment of guaranteeing “positively and efficaciously … the perfect neutrality of the … Isthmus [and] the rights of sovereignty and property which New Granada has and possesses over the said territory” (Bartlett 1964, 244–245). Although only bilateral, such a compact was clearly accepted on the part of the United States as a managerial role in the security of Central America generally associated with the tasks undertaken by Great Powers in Bull’s analysis. The recognition of that status would be confirmed in 1850 by one of the Great Powers themselves, in the Clayton– Bulwer Treaty between Britain and the United States, in which each pledged not to control an isthmian canal to the exclusion of the other, promised to promote the construction of a canal open on the same terms to both, and undertook that, should such a canal be built, “they will protect it from interruption, seizure or unjust confiscation, and that they will guarantee the neutrality thereof” (Bartlett 1964, 251–252). Both a self-denying ordinance and a positive obligation, the treaty accorded the United States the same status, at least on this regional question, as a recognized Great Power. If this mid-century treatment of the Isthmus showed the United States intently conscious of the gradations in international society and strongly desirous of standing itself on the highest of these gradations—again, with the proviso that the case was one entirely within the special rights and responsibilities asserted by Washington under the Monroe Doctrine—another aspect of international society with which the United States demonstrated itself to

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be familiar was the operation of an international balance of power. Here, the case derives from the intense maneuvering among the United States, Britain, France, Mexico, and the Republic of Texas over the future of that republic in the 1840s. Successive American presidential administrations made clear that they hoped for the voluntary annexation of Texas by the United States; British and French policies showed them equally determined to frustrate any such outcome. In this context, the American government showed itself wholly familiar with the principle and practice of the balance of power, especially when it found itself cast in the role of the potentially encroaching power that required to be balanced against. In his public statements to the French Chamber of Deputies, the French Premier and Foreign Minister Francois Guizot had applied the principle of equilibrium in the context of American affairs to justify cooperation with Britain against the rising American power. “He … developed and defended with elaborate sophistry his famous theory, of American equilibrium, and the policy of preventing the great and growing American republic from absorbing her feebler neighbours in the western hemisphere,” William King, the American Minister to France, wrote to Secretary of State James Buchanan early in 1846, while from London Louis McLane, the American Minister there, warned Buchanan at the end of 1845 against “the novel idea of regulating, and supervising the balance of power on the American continent by the Governments of Europe” (Manning 1932–1939, VI: 565; II: 986, 289). In any case, the American government was pursuing dominance rather than equilibrium in North and Central America, in the confidence that, as Jacob Martin, writing from Paris, put it to Buchanan, “our true interest and dignity rest upon ourselves.” “We owe [our security] chiefly to our strength, aided by distance,” Martin went on, “and to the reacting danger of meddling with us” (Manning 1932–1939, VI: 572–573). As its actions in expelling the French-supported regime of Maximilian III from Mexico in 1867 demonstrated, when the United States added to this territorial extent a stronger military capability and a more powerful central government generally as an outcome of the Civil War, a material basis existed for the country to attain a more central status in the society of states. America’s Highly Tentative Engagement

This history may serve as background to the emergence of the United States conscious of its own status as a Great Power and insistent on the legitimacy of that role, but it does not quite reach the full dimensions of what Bull seems to have in mind in his discussion of the character and role of Great Powers. Thus far, this has concerned itself only with a state’s accumulation of enough power to make itself, in the words of Martin Wight, “a power

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which can protect its interests and make its strength felt throughout the whole extent of a states-system” (Wight 1977, 63). The concentration of Washington on the affairs of the Americas, and most particularly those of North and Central America, and the habit of dealing with these affairs in bilateral rather than multilateral settings indicate a regional power, rather than a global Great Power. Beyond capabilities, one must look at legitimacy. Without legitimacy, even a powerful state will fall somewhat short of Bull’s observation that Great Powers are seen, by others and by themselves, as “entitled to a voice in the settlement of international issues beyond those that are of immediate concern to [them]” and capable of “defining [their] interests widely enough to encompass the preservation of an international system in which the bulk of member states regard themselves as having a stake” (Bull 1980, 437, 438). In Wight’s terms, we advance beyond “the grading of powers” to “the managerial function of the great powers” (Wight 1977, 136). The record of the United States in the several conferences and congresses that punctuated the diplomacy of the nineteenth century reveals that American participation in these multilateral conclaves was non-existent at the beginning, merely fitful later on, and taken for granted only by the end, with the United States at last going beyond attendance at such meetings to leadership in summoning these gatherings and taking the initiative in setting their agenda. That agenda was seen by Washington as a global, not a regional, one, and its own function as “a great power manager in co-operation with other great powers” (Bull 1980, 440). Previous to the close of the 1890s, however, Washington’s record in these meetings in the nineteenth century had been spotty. Although the United States had been at war with Britain simultaneously with the final stages of the Napoleonic Wars, the American war was viewed by all and sundry as separate from the struggle in Europe, with the result that in 1815, while Britain and the other Great Powers negotiated in Vienna, the Americans made peace with the British in Ghent. The United States was not a belligerent in the Crimean War and was not invited to the Congress of Paris to end the war in 1856. It was invited to accede to the separate Declaration of Paris on maritime law, but it declined to do so after its proffered “Marcy amendment” (named for Secretary of State William Marcy), completely exempting non-contraband private property from capture at sea was rejected by the powers at Paris. (After developing a larger navy, however, Washington did declare that it would respect the principles of the Declaration during the American Civil War, and in the Spanish–American War, it abided by them as general principles of international law.) No American representatives attended the Congress of Berlin in 1878 as it grappled with the clashing interests of the European Great Powers in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean. The United States

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was represented by two American diplomats, John Kasson and Henry Sanford, at the Conference of Berlin in 1884–1885, dealing with the territorial division of sub-Saharan Africa; perhaps its close connection to the West African country of Liberia secured its invitation (Craven 2015). Alongside these occasional American contributions to inter-governmental conferences, American nongovernmental organizations were increasingly active in sponsoring, and individual American citizens frequently attending, meetings designed to express a view or build pressure on governments to support various international initiatives or combat what were seen as international problems. F.H. Hinsley has pointed to the increasing number of committees and other cooperative efforts that contributed to a kind of international civil society, as in the establishment of the Geneva Red Cross in 1864. “The number of private international organisations grew … rapidly,” he notes. One hundred thirty “were founded between 1875 and 1899 and no less than 355 between 1900 and 1919” (Hinsley 1963, 261–262). The phenomenon of war produced many of these gatherings, with associations dedicated to its regulation or its abolition, but other questions, such as international trade or finance, or public health, also figured in an increasingly crowded international calendar (Hinsley 1963, 114–149). As expressed most dramatically by the Union for Democratic Control in Britain, they counted on enlightened public opinion to direct the actions of governments. Handling relations with this emerging non-governmental component of international society would also prove to be part of the responsibilities of a Great Power (Best 1999). The American Assumption of Great-Power Rank

On August 24, 1898, Count Mikhail Muraviev, the Russian Foreign Minister, announced to the weekly gathering of ambassadors and ministers accredited to the Imperial Russian Government that Czar Nicholas II wished to convene a conference aimed at halting the further development of armaments and “assuring to all peoples the blessing of real and lasting peace” (Best 1999, 621). He suggested that such a meeting take place in the Netherlands at the invitation of Queen Wilhelmina. Following consultation with their home governments, the diplomats of Germany, Austria–Hungary, Italy, France, and Britain indicated that they would accept the invitation. “The Great Powers being agreeable, it remained to complete the invitation list,” which ultimately did include the United States (Best’s use of the phrase “the Great Powers” suggests that other powers, including the United States, were not Great Powers. The two Hague Conferences were themselves important in altering this opinion.) Brazil had been invited to attend but “replied that it had no permanent army worth mentioning,” Mexico was the only other

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American state to appear at the first Hague Conference (Hull 1908, 11). The states in attendance, though they accounted for fewer than half of the sovereign states existing in 1899, amounted to more than three-fourths of the world’s population and economic resources. When the Conference convened on May 18, 1899, the United States would hold one of the 27 honorary offices, though it chaired none of the subdivisions of the Conference: the three “Commissions” and the five “subcommissions.” Individual American representatives were, however, generally regarded as being influential on the course of the deliberations, including the head of the American delegation, Andrew White (former ambassador to Germany and Minister to Russia), and Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, who played a considerable part in drafting the recommendations of the Conference on the rules of naval warfare. Indeed, White, Mahan, Captain William Crozier of the U.S. Army, and Frederick W. Holls, a New York attorney who served as both a delegate and secretary of the delegation, spoke at length on topics of importance and appeared to feel no reluctance to take the lead in discussions, alongside the representatives of other Great Powers. Mahan even felt free to suggest that the Conference propose changing the symbol (and, presumably, the name) of an entirely different organization, the International Red Cross (Hull 1908, 115). Mahan in generally opposing restrictions on naval warfare that he found impracticable or overly ambitious; Crozier in making similar arguments on instruments of land warfare; White in continuing the long-standing American desire to protect from capture the private property of citizens of neutral and even belligerent countries during war at sea; and Holls in treating several aspects of what developed into the greatest preoccupation of the Conference, arbitration, demonstrated significant leadership in a setting in which all the Great Powers were present, each closely examining issues of great importance to its national security. Holls, perhaps one of the American delegates least well known to Europeans before the Conference began, created an impression on other delegations in a speech on arbitration, in which he began by noting, “This is the first occasion upon which the United States of America takes part under circumstances so momentous in the deliberations of the states of Europe.” When the committee considering arbitration had largely completed its work but still found that the German delegation was unable to support the proposal, as it considered itself under instructions from its government not to do so, the committee adjourned for nine days to allow the German representative on the committee to return to Berlin to consult with his superiors. On the suggestion of Count Munster, the first delegate of Germany, and White, the committee unanimously proposed that Holls (whose “article in regard to special mediation had been peculiarly acceptable to German ideals, and [whose] course during the debate and … genial personality had helped to

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make him persona grata at the German capital”) should also make the trip to Berlin. Whether from Holls’ influence or other reasons, the German government withdrew its objections, and the committee was able to act with the required unanimity (Hull 1908, 376, 386–387). American participation at the first Hague Conference stimulated America’s civil society groups. Holls devoted much of his speech before the committee on arbitration to “civilized, educated, progressive public opinion, which is beyond all question the most potent and the one irresistible moral influence in the world to-day” (Hull 1908, 377). It is certainly true that the American delegates, seemingly to a greater extent than their counterparts, found themselves the recipients of “hundreds of expressions of sympathy and support, not only from the United States, but from the entire American continent,” and “not only from individuals, but from secular organizations of the highest standing and the widest influence, and from great and powerful churches—some of them representing millions of members” (Hull 1908, 376). These attentions were not always welcomed by their objects; White confided to his diary, The queer letters and crankish proposals which come in every day are amazing … It goes without saying that the Quakers are out in full force … The number of people with plans, schemes, notions, nostrums, whimsies of all sorts, who press upon us and try to take our time, is enormous. (Best 1999, 623) For the United States, perhaps in advance of all the other Great Powers, the era of involvement in diplomacy by civil society had arrived. Many of these self-appointed representatives of public opinion would find themselves somewhat disappointed by the results of the Conference. No measures of disarmament were agreed on, though the delegates did express the hope that the burden of armaments could be relieved. Some measures of regulation of war at sea, and a greater number of measures regulating land warfare, were approved. The American government, which had appeared to come close to success in its effort to protect from capture private property at sea during wartime, had in the end given up this effort because, according to White, “What we are sent here for is, above all, to devise some scheme of arbitration; and anything which comes in the way of this, by provoking ill feeling or prolonging the discussion on other points, will diminish our chances of obtaining what the whole world so earnestly desires” (Hull 1908, 452). Yet the Conference was unable to agree on any plan for compulsory arbitration of disputes arising out of such seizures or out of disputes over the forcible collection of international public debts. The Americans seemed to have established themselves as active interlocutors in

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Great-Power deliberations on matters of general international concern, but the Conference itself found much of its significance in laying the foundation for its successor. For the Americans, the most important outcome of a rather sparse record of success was the establishment of a Permanent Court of Arbitration. Not a court in the common domestic sense, but a panel of judges, selected by governments, from which those who would hear any case would be drawn, would now be ready to hear and apply a consistent set of rules to any disputes that states wished to submit to them. Many non-governmental groups had hoped for more, but this outcome was viewed as at least something on which to build (Moore 1944, II: 27–70). The delegates in 1899 had separated believing that a subsequent conference continuing the work they had begun would not be long delayed. Warfare in the form of the Anglo–Boer War beginning in 1899 and the Russo–Japanese War of 1904–1905, however, made it impossible for the work of the first Conference to be resumed until peace had returned. (In the case of the Russo–Japanese War, of course, American mediation under the direction of President Roosevelt helped to secure a treaty of peace— another indication of the rise of the United States to Great-Power status and its assumption of responsibilities as well as rights associated with that status.) In 1904, there occurred the annual meeting of the Interparliamentary Union, a non-governmental body dedicated, like many other private groups, to international peace, but one composed of members of the parliamentary or legislative institutions of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Latin–American republics, and almost all the states of Europe. The meeting of 1904 took place in St. Louis, Missouri, and approved a resolution calling on the nations of the world to organize a second peace conference. A deputation of some 200 members of the Union immediately went to Washington to present the resolution to Roosevelt personally, and Roosevelt promised at once to act in accordance with it. His Secretary of State, John Hay, in October, distributed a circular laying out items for the agenda of such a proposed conference and advocating that the conference, when it met, should return to The Hague (Scott 1914). In doing so, Roosevelt took one further step in the assumption by the United States of the prerogatives of a Great Power, in that Washington was not simply accepting the invitation of other powers to a conference on matters of general international interest but was taking the lead in prompting it. According to Hull, following the completion of the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the Russo–Japanese War in September 1905, the Czar instructed his ambassador in Washington to communicate to the President the Czar’s desire to convoke a second conference at The Hague, and to inquire if the President would be willing to relinquish the

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honor of calling the second one to the Czar, who had summoned the first. President Roosevelt expressed himself as delighted with this arrangement, and after the necessary diplomatic correspondence the Russian government issued its invitation to the nations and its programme of topics. (Hull 1908, 5; U.S., Congress, Senate 1908, 1) The second Hague Conference would have convened in 1906, but the American republics had already determined to hold their third PanAmerican Conference in the summer of that year, and so The Hague Conference, it was decided, would take place in 1907. Two points are of relevance here: the inter-relation between the global Hague meeting and the regional Pan-American conference, and Roosevelt’s resolute readiness to engage in Great-Power leadership, which sometimes left other actors endeavoring to catch up. In pursuit of the first of these points, it will be necessary to embark on a brief excursion to Rio de Janeiro for the Pan-American meeting, at which the American delegates always conducted themselves with one eye on the approaching conference at The Hague. Thus, the instructions of Elihu Root (who had succeeded Hay as Secretary of State) to the American delegation headed by William Buchanan, a former Minister to Panama and to Argentina, informed them that the treatment of the subject of arbitration in Rio de Janeiro “should be materially affected by the new and more satisfactory relation of the American States generally to the consideration of arbitration as a world question by the peace conference at The Hague, soon to take place.” As noted, in 1899, only two American states, the United States and Mexico, had been present, and in the preliminary circular on a second Hague Conference Hay had specified the need to allow states that had not had the opportunity to adhere to the limited agreements on arbitration in 1899 to do so, and to participate in the work of the second Hague Conference on a footing of complete equality with those states that had been present at the first conference. Root reported to the delegates that this aim had been achieved so that all of the American States are accordingly at liberty to become parties to the general arbitration treaty of The Hague and to take part in the consideration by the whole civilized world of the advances which may be made in the application of the principle of arbitration. His conclusion was that “the Conference at Rio can probably render no more useful service to the cause of arbitration than by securing the general assent of the American States to the principles which should receive a new impetus and universal effect at The Hague” (U.S., Congress, Senate 1908, 40–41).

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A second issue to receive attention in Root’s instructions also had to do with arbitration. The United States had striven at the 1899 Conference to institute compulsory, and not voluntary, arbitration in a handful of cases, one of which was the use of force for the collection of public debts from one government to another. Root reminded the delegates that U.S. policy had long been not to employ force in such instances unless “circumstances of fraud and wrong doing or violation of treaties … justify the use of force.” He recognized that many Latin–American countries would wish the American conference to place itself on record as opposing the use of force in all cases of nonpayment of debts, but pointed out that, since most Latin–American countries were debtors and most of their creditors were European countries, such action would have the appearance of debtors dictating to creditors how their obligations would be met, “and this would not inspire respect.” The better alternative, Root observed, would be “to request the second Hague Conference, where both creditors and debtors will be assembled, to consider the subject” (U.S., Congress, Senate 1908, 41–42). The conference “program,” or set of draft resolutions prepared for the delegates to consider, supported the positions of the American Government— not particularly surprising, since Root had been influential in writing the draft resolutions—and the conference itself also endorsed language in accord with Washington’s preferences. It was no doubt helpful to American negotiators as they sought to follow Root’s instructions that they could point out to their counterparts from the other countries of the Americas that the United States had fought on their behalf on both issues at the first Hague Conference and that it had also striven to ensure that they would be invited to The Hague in the upcoming conference, as they had not been in 1899. Useful, too, was the advice given by Roosevelt in his instructions to the U.S. delegates to the previous Conference of American States held in Mexico in 1901, instructions that were included in the materials given to the U.S. delegates going to Rio. Noting that “if the influence of the United States spreads southward, it will be a pacific, not a hostile, influence,” the president had gone on to specify more directly what tactics this pacific influence dictated: It is not … opportune for the delegates of the United States to assume the part of leadership in the conference, either in its official organization or in its discussions—a position which naturally belongs to Mexico, the inviting nation and host of the occasion. It is desirable that the plans and propositions of the Latin-American States should be solicited, received with consideration, and if possible brought to fruition—if this can be done in consonance with our national interests and without offense to other powers. Great care should be taken not to wound the sensibilities

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of any of the Republics, or to take sides upon issues between them, but to treat them with frankness, equity, and generosity, and to disabuse their minds of any false impressions, if such exist, regarding the attitude and purposes of the United States. (U.S., Congress, Senate 1908, 46–47) It likewise could not have hurt that Root himself came to Rio toward the conclusion of the conference and delivered an address to a special session. In his introduction of Root, Dr. Joaquim Nabuco of Brazil, the president of the conference, noted, “This is the first time … that an American Secretary of State officially visits a foreign nation, and we all feel happy that that first visit was to Latin America.” Root, in his turn, made sure to remind his audience that Within a few months, for the first time the recognized possessors of every foot of soil upon the American continents can be, and I hope will be, represented with the acknowledged rights of equal sovereign States in the great World Congress at The Hague. This will be the world’s formal and final acceptance of the declaration that no part of the American continents is to be deemed subject to colonization. This reference to the Monroe Doctrine was recorded as being received with “loud applause,” and Senor Mariano Cornejo of Peru, charged with delivering a brief response to Root’s remarks, described Roosevelt as the great American who, for the elevation of his ideas and for the nobleness of his sentiments, is the worthy chief of the powerful Republic which serves us as an example, as a stimulus, and a center of gravitation for the political and social systems of America. (U.S., Congress, Senate 1908, 62, 64) Even given the flowery remarks expected in such a gala occasion, one could hardly conceive of a better description of Bull’s conception of Great Powers as “great responsibles.” Root had reason to be pleased. The resolution on arbitration conformed exactly to Washington’s wishes, recommending as it did that all American states instruct their Delegates to the Second Conference to be held at The Hague, to endeavor to secure by the said Assembly, of worldwide character, the celebration of a General Arbitration Convention, so effective and definite that, meriting the approval of the civilized world, it shall be accepted and put in force by every nation.

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Likewise, the conference resolved to invite the Second Peace Conference, at The Hague, to examine the question of the compulsory collection of public debts, and, in general, means tending to diminish between Nations conflicts having an exclusively pecuniary origin. (U.S., Congress, Senate 1908, 97, 116) The United States therefore came to The Hague in June 1907 armed with the support of a clutch of American states, almost all of which had been absent in 1899 but were now prepared to stand with Washington on two issues to which the United States attached some considerable importance. They attributed their presence at the Conference to American advocacy, and they looked to the United States for leadership on matters of significance to them. While Root’s instructions to the U.S. delegates warned them against allowing a global conference to intrude in “purely American questions” and, conversely, against permitting “our participation in matters of general and world-wide concern [to draw] us into the political affairs of Europe,” he did observe that, in the effort to bring mankind into conformity with great ideals. … it sometimes happens that the very absence of a special interest in a subject enables a nation to make suggestions and urge considerations which a more deeply interested nation might hesitate to present. The United States Government therefore “feels it to be its duty to reserve for itself the liberty to propose” actions of general interest such as the limitation or reduction of armaments, even though American armed forces, at least on land, were of a comparatively small size. (There was, it must be said, no mention of non-American states having a similarly broadened or disinterested view of American affairs (U.S., Congress, Senate 1908, 4–6).) A renewal of the American efforts that had been expended at least since 1856 to protect neutral goods from seizure by a belligerent in time of war would be one of these “matters of general and world-wide concern.” So would a step beyond the endorsement of the principle of arbitration in 1899 to the negotiation of a general treaty for compulsory arbitration. The Permanent Court of Arbitration of 1899—a panel of judges selected by the member states, it will be recalled, to arbitrate disputes voluntarily submitted to it by states—would, Root hoped, be succeeded by “a permanent tribunal composed of judges who are judicial officers and nothing else” and to whom states would consider it safe to place themselves under a binding obligation to submit their disputes because these judges would not be mediators or diplomats proposing compromises of their own devising, but officers charged

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strictly with applying legal principles to the facts of a case (U.S., Congress, Senate 1908, 7–8). As in 1899, neither the head of the American delegation, Joseph Choate nor any of the other members of the delegation chaired one of the four Commissions, but Americans served on almost all of them and their subcommissions. For a period of some four months, from June 15 to October 18, the Conference, in its plenary sessions and its committee and subcommittee meetings, discussed and debated the lengthy agenda that had been set before it. The greatest disappointment for the Americans lay in the failure to bring to completion the negotiation of a true Permanent Court of Arbitration. Everything about that institution was settled except the method of selecting judges, which failed in the face of disagreement between the larger states and the smaller on the demand of some of the latter group for exact equality among all states, regardless of size, in seating judges on the court. In this debate, the American representatives, while proffering many compromise solutions, largely ranged themselves with the larger states—that is to say, with their fellow Great Powers. But the Americans consoled themselves with the fact that the Conference determined that no further action would be required to bring a Court of Arbitral Justice into operation, and, in the words of one enthusiast, “when two or more powers agree upon the appointment of its judges, it will open its doors for the pacification of disputes” and, “like a city set upon a hill, it will eventually draw to it all nations seeking to escape the evils of warfare” (Hull 1908, 404). The “Convention Concerning the Limitation of the Employment of Force in the Collection of Contract Debts,” modeled on such an agreement adopted by the American states among themselves, “was introduced by the American delegation and adopted by the Conference” (U.S., Congress, Senate 1908, 29). No general exemption of neutral goods from seizure in the naval war was agreed to, though the American proposal to do so, after “an eloquent speech” by Choate, received more votes in the subcommittee to which it was presented than did the motion of any other country. (It must have been particularly wounding, after the accolades of the Rio conference, that the representative of Colombia should have not only opposed the American plan but also attacked the recent American naval buildup as an abandonment of the “good old days when the United States was the disinterested defender of the principles of justice and humanity” (Hull 1908, 134–136)). In raising and defending proposals, American representatives were restrained. “We were instructed never to press anything to the point of irritation,” Choate subsequently explained, but if we found that it was not possible to carry a thing by general consent, then we were to carry it as far as we could and drop it and leave it

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for further consideration in the hope that by and by, by the growing sense of the nations, it would be accepted. (Hull 1908, 140–141) Despite a proviso not ruling out the use of force if arbitration failed, the prohibition otherwise of the use of armed force for the collection of debts met American (and inter-American) desires and stood as a tangible accomplishment of Roosevelt’s and Root’s patient diplomacy, both in Rio and in The Hague. A number of amendments were made to the law of war, both at sea and on land, but the willingness of the United States to accept many of these changes because they did not apply to it since it anticipated continuing its traditional policy of maintaining neutrality in almost all armed conflicts, raises the question of whether a state that has fully accepted the “managerial responsibilities” of a Great Power, as Bull would put it, can so confidently expect to remain free from involvement in the use of force to maintain international order or preserve a global or regional balance of power. One further question of international reform led by Great Powers and dealing with organized non-government opinion as a role of Great Powers arose as a final example of the American assumption of rank in this period— the World Conservation Congress. The conservation of natural resources had become a defining feature of Roosevelt’s nearly eight years in the presidency. In May of 1908, a Governors’ Conference on Conservation brought the chief executives of every state to the White House to discuss the wise use of such resources as water and timber, and at the recommendation of the Conference Roosevelt created the National Conservation Commission, which in turn sponsored its own Joint Conservation Conference in December of that year. Gifford Pinchot, Chief Forester in the Department of Agriculture and a primary adviser to Roosevelt on issues of conservation, suggested to the president the replication of these efforts at the international level, and in late December, Roosevelt sent Pinchot to Canada and Mexico carrying the president’s invitation to a North American Conservation Conference. In addition to these confidential messages, Pinchot gave several public addresses to Canadian and Mexican audiences touting public action on conservation. Both of the invited governments accepted, and on February 18, 1909, the conference opened at the White House with delegates from the United States and the other two countries of North America present. When the NACC completed its business on February 23, it included among its final recommendations the suggestion that Roosevelt issue a similar invitation to a global meeting at which all states would “join together in conference on the subject of world resources and their inventory, conservation, and wise utilization” (Clinton 1996, 293). In fact, well before the NACC had made its recommendation to the president, he seemed to have made up his mind on replicating the regional

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conference on a global scale. On January 8, nearly six weeks before the NACC met, notes went out to the “principal governments,” in London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Rome, and Madrid, seeking their opinion on the idea. On February 8, ten days before the North American conference began, the American legation in the Netherlands was told to inform the government of the wish that the world conference be held at The Hague and to seek a date convenient to the Dutch government for the conference to begin. On February 19, while the NACC was meeting and before it had been informed that it “would be agreeable” to Roosevelt if it made this recommendation to him, the State Department circulated to American diplomats abroad the news that “By direction of the President, and with the concurrence of Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands, an invitation is extended” to the host governments of these U.S. envoys, with the date of the conference to follow. On March 4, Roosevelt left office, having succeeded in committing the United States to organize a global conference at which, although it would not act as host, it would clearly direct events. It was a splash for a relatively new Great Power. Roosevelt and his subordinates understood conservation to be a novel form of “mutual interest” among the members of the society of states. He assumed that the effort would be led by the Great Powers (or the “principal governments”), and he intended that the United States should lead the Great Powers. Beyond the value of conservation itself, he and his lieutenants considered it an issue that could promote international cooperation more generally. Speaking of the North American meeting, Pinchot emphasized to Roosevelt the kind of relation between the countries promoted by this Conference—a larger degree of cooperation than ever before, combined with the fullest freedom of action for each Nation within its own sphere. Really a new kind of international relation may well arise from this movement. (Clinton 1996, 296) Conservation, like arbitration, could be a means of not only managing international society but reforming it. Roosevelt and members of his administration were also plowing new ground in the management of public opinion as an asset in pursuing one’s policy objective. The Governors’ Conference on Conservation generated widespread publicity for conservation policies, as did the National Conservation Commission, which extended the list of “notables” enlisted in the conservation cause from the governors to other leaders holding public office, as well as those prominent in private advocacy groups which were becoming active in promoting the conservation of natural resources. Pinchot was sent to Canada and Mexico in part to open a public-relations front in those two states as

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well. It was, therefore, ironic that the greatest involvement of the public in setting the broad outlines of foreign policy—a democratic election—created the force that ultimately stymied the World Conservation Conference. Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor and close friend, William Howard Taft, during his four years as President, set aside more land for protected status than Roosevelt had, but he had no faith in a world congress on the subject, and the Taft administration quietly abandoned the entire project. Conclusion

The picture drawn in this chapter is one of a fairly steady increase in the national economic capabilities that can serve as the basis for military strength, followed a step or two behind by an increase in the willingness of the existing members of the Club of Great Powers to admit the United States to their ranks, and finally, in the closing two decades of the period, the readiness of the American government to employ these instruments of power as an active, leading “responsible” Great Power itself. Thus, it was only toward the end of the nineteenth century that the United States relatively rapidly began to act as if it conceived of itself as a Great Power on a world scale. That is, American policy-makers, in their actions, demonstrated an awareness of the tremendous capabilities of which their country now disposed, but beyond that, they now assumed that it was proper for the United States to assume the rights and the duties of a member of that exclusive club. At the two Hague Conferences and the contemporaneous conferences of the American states, and in the inception of the World Conservation Conference, the United States admitted that its power placed it in a different category from the majority of the members of the society of states. The tact with which it was capable of acting did not disguise—at least in its internal communications— its recognition that it was now one of the leaders of international society. Its assumption that if it did not lead, the society of states might bog down in stalemate or let promising opportunities for international reform pass by sometimes led it into impatience that startled or irritated more senior members of the club. But that is quite a different thing from an unawareness that one has passed the test entitling one to club membership or a principled refusal to take on the responsibilities that Bull would say accompany membership. Around 1900 the American government began to play an active and leading part in attempting to give a lead to a society of states always resistant to central direction. It was during these years that American policy-makers began to think of themselves less as a minor power or a remote, purely “American” entity, in either role suspicious of attempts by Great Powers to dictate to it, and began to conceive of themselves as one of those Great Powers—still insistent on a distinction between “European” and “American” questions, but also ready to define certain issues as applicable to the entire international

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society, susceptible to being successfully dealt with only through coordinated action by that society, and ripe for leadership by the Great Powers, of whom it now considered itself one. The changes in its thinking marked the ascent of successive levels, from the beginning point of small-power status to the building and acquisition of a sufficient degree of capabilities without which it is idle to think of shouldering either the rights or the responsibilities of a Great Power, to a consideration of one’s power relative to others (which entails a conception of a balance of power), to the acceptance (by Americans and by the other Great Powers) of a share in exercising the managerial functions of a sort of executive committee of international society, and finally to an initiatory and not merely reactive role in the work of this exclusive but not impermeable club—the most “responsible” role of all. References Bartlett, R. (1964). The Record of American Diplomacy: Documents and Readings in the History of American Foreign Relations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Best, G. (1999). Peace conferences and the Century of Total War: The 1899 Hague Conference and What Came After. International Affairs 75(3), 619–634. Bull, H. (1977). The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Bull, H. (1980). The Great Irresponsibles? The United States, the Soviet Union, and World Order. International Journal 35(3), 437–447. Clinton, D. (1996). The World Conservation Congress: A Study in International Commitment. Diplomacy and Statecraft 7(2), 290–313. Craven, M. (2015). Between Law and History: The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 and the Logic of Free Trade. London Review of International Law 3(1), 31–59. Hinsley, F. (1963). Power and the Pursuit of Peace: Theory and Practice in the History of Relations Between States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hull, W. (1908). The Two Hague Conferences and Their Contributions to International Law. Boston, MA: Ginn & Company. Manning, W. (1932–1939). Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States: Inter-American Affairs, 1831–1860. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Moore, J. (1944). The Collected Works of John Bassett Moore. New Haven: Yale University Press. Rossiter, C. (2003). The Federalist Papers. New York: Signet Classics. Scott, J. (1909). Judicial Settlement of International Disputes. The Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907. 2 vols. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press (15, 16). U.S., Congress, Senate. (1908). Report of the Delegates of the United States to the Third International Conference of the American States, 60th Cong., 1st sess. Wight, M. (1977). Systems of States. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Wolfers, A. (1962). Discord and Collaboration: Essays in International Politics. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.

12 CONSTITUTING THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY The United States and the Primary Institutions of International Society Barry Buzan and Richard Little

The aim of this book has been to re-evaluate the role played by the United States in the evolution of international society during the course of the nineteenth century. The common assumption is that the United States played a negligible role in international politics during the century and that it failed to engage with European norms and practices because successive American governments chose to isolate the United States from European affairs. The common story goes that the first priority of the nascent republic was to expand the boundaries of the state and transform the thirteen colonies that broke away from the British Empire at the end of the eighteenth century into a continental nation-state and that it was only by the end of the century that it possessed the necessary resources along with the willingness to play the role of a great power on the world stage. Although this historical narrative has been questioned, it has not been successfully replaced, not at least in the field of international relations. An important reason for a failure to appreciate what has been a more significant role is the tendency in the United States to ignore the theoretical framework provided by the English School. That framework centers on the concept of an international society, whereas contemporary American thinking is dominated by the narrower, more mechanical, idea of the international system. The contention is that by focusing on the primary institutions that constitute international society, it becomes possible not only to provide a much richer account of how the United States developed as an international actor but also to reformulate the English School’s own account of how global international society evolved during the nineteenth century. In keeping with this purpose, this final chapter, drawing in part on the preceding chapters, aims to provide a succinct account of how the primary institutions that constitute international society affected and were affected DOI: 10.4324/9781003334927-12

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by the emergence of the United States as an independent actor. As Stivachtis reveals in the introductory chapter, there is no fully agreed list of primary institutions. But there is a set of eight widely agreed institutions that are clearly relevant to how the relationship between the United States and the international society evolved across the nineteenth century: these are sovereignty, the balance of power, international law, diplomacy, war, the market, colonialism, and great power management (see Chapter 1). This set is easily deep and wide enough to make our case. We examine, first, the impact of each of the institutions on the United States and then the impact of the United States on the evolving international society. What this assessment reveals is the importance of these institutions for the United States. But then, in Part 2, it also shows the impact of the United States on the development and evolution of these institutions. Not only does the English School have something significant to say about the history of the United States, but also the history of the United States has substantial implications for the English School’s account of international society during the long nineteenth century.

Part 1—The Impact of Primary Institutions on the United States Sovereignty

When the British government signed a Peace Treaty in 1783 with the United States that had declared its independence from the British Empire in 1776, it acknowledged in Article 1 that all 13 of its former colonies, making up the United States, were “free, sovereign, and independent states.” Each state claimed the right to declare war, conclude peace, and establish trade with other states. It is far from clear, therefore, that at this point, the United States itself indisputably constituted a fully formed de jure sovereign state. If the constituent states of the United States were “free, sovereign and independent,” then in what sense could the United States also be considered sovereign? From an English School perspective, a state can only be considered a fully fledged sovereign state when it is acknowledged as a legitimate member of an ongoing international society by the members of that society. Federalists in the United States were certainly doubtful in 1783 that this point had been reached, and, by the same token, they also acknowledged that membership in this international society was essential for the long-term survival of the United States itself. The Federalists recognized that although treaties had been signed with several European states, this indicator of recognition was, at best, temporary and could easily be withdrawn. After the Peace Treaty was signed, it was soon apparent that not all the states in the United States were abiding by the terms of the treaty, and they were thereby violating the law of nations. It became increasingly apparent to the Federalists that if the United States was to be acknowledged as a full and

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equal member of the international society, they would have to make some essential constitutional changes. This was one of the key reasons behind the establishment of a new Constitution, ratified in 1788. It was, at least in part, designed to convince the members of the international society that the United States had the necessary attributes to be admitted into the international society. In particular, the Europeans needed to be assured that the United States was willing and able to enforce the law of nations at home and abide by the law of nations in their dealings with other members of the international society. To achieve this end, while the future existence of the ex-colonial states was guaranteed, they lost any right to negotiate with other members of international society. Instead, the Constitution gave the federal government a number of important powers related to the management of diplomacy, international trade, and war. In addition, the president, like many European monarchs, was given the powers of a Commander-in-Chief. Any powers not delegated to the federal government remained with the constituent states, but the federal government now had complete control over foreign affairs. The Constitution ensured that the law of nations would be enforced and, constitutionally, took precedence over domestic law. The new constitutional arrangements were published and circulated around Europe. Shortly after the Constitution came into effect, this development began to bear fruit when the Netherlands allowed the United States to obtain loans on very favorable terms. However, it was only after the War of 1812 with Britain that all the controversies arising from the new federal powers over foreign policy were resolved, and the United States finally and unequivocally consolidated its status as a fully sovereign and equal member of the international society (Golove and Hulsebosch 2010; Golove and Hulsebosch 2018; Edling 2018). The Constitution of the United States was thus deeply shaped by the sovereignty norms of international society from an early stage. Balance of Power

As Hendrickson (Chapter 3) acknowledges, the founding fathers of the United States were very familiar with the idea of the balance of power as an institution that had helped to maintain the existence of the European international society. They recognized that the balance of power had successfully prevented the formation of a universal monarchy. But they were also aware that alliance formation had the capacity to generate tensions, and, as a consequence, the institution was closely associated with the precipitation of war. Yet, they knew that the Americans owed their independence to the operation of the balance of power. France had come to their assistance against the British largely because of the balance of power considerations.

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The Americans were under no illusions that the balance of power could persist as a dominant institution on the North American continent. The Europeans, after all, had a very significant presence on the continent in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The Seven Years War (1756–1763) was fought by the Europeans in Europe, the Americas, and the Asia Pacific, and one of the major consequences of the war was the removal of France as a great power from North America. When the United States came into existence, the European balance of power extended across North America, and the maneuvres of the European states operating in North America had a significant impact on the European balance of power. The founding fathers were well aware that the balance of power had given rise to the partition of Poland, and there was a constant fear that balance of power concerns could encourage the Europeans to threaten the very existence of their nascent state. Fear of this institution was thus a strong driver of the need to establish sovereignty at the federal level and to prevent the fragmentation of North America into rival polities. Initially, that applied to the thirteen colonies, but the same fear also played into the American Civil War. Had the Confederacy won its independence, the balance of power would have returned to North America. As we show later, during the course of the nineteenth century, the United States succeeded in eliminating the operation of the balance of power on the North American continent. International Law

Even before the revolutionary war, the Americans had a very favorable view of the law of nations, but they also recognized that their adherence to this law was essential if they wished to be accepted as a member of the international society made up of “civilized” states. The Americans were primarily influenced by Grotius and subsequent jurists like Pufendorf and Vattel who all thought along similar lines. These theorists came from countries with comparable political, military, and economic profiles to the United States, and their writings aimed to advance commercial interests in international society (Sylvester 1999). Grotius has always represented a significant figure in English School thinking, being closely associated with the idea of an international society (Bull, Roberts and Kingsbury 2003). He argued that states had to abide by recognized rules of conduct in war and peace; he believed that diplomatic relations had to be formalized and that sovereignty had to be respected. Boukema insists that Grotius’ legal system has retained its influence over four hundred years and continues to form the “bedrock of international law” (1983,71). Certainly, the Americans endorsed his view of the world. In particular, they wished to promote Grotius’ rule expressed in Mare Liberum (1609) that it was “lawful for any nation to go to any other and trade with it” (Mack,2022). This is sometimes associated with the

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emergence of capitalism, specifically mercantile capitalism, and the development of long-distance trade and the interaction of divergent legal systems (Borschberg 2011; Koskenniemi2013). Although the American’s nascent state was concerned about security, it was also preoccupied with the need to maintain and expand its commercial interests. The founding fathers associated both their future safety and prosperity with an expansion of commercial relations. Here, they were following Vattel, who argued how effective commerce could become in regulating affairs between rival states. He acknowledged that England had recognized the importance of trade and that “it is chiefly commerce that places in her hand the balance of Europe” (Christov 2013). Although there were strenuous attempts from the time of the Declaration of Independence to convince the Europeans that the United States would be bound by international law, these efforts were constantly undermined, initially because the constituent states insisted on exerting their own sovereign rights, meaning that their courts had the right to interpret international law or even set it aside. Washington argued in 1781 that if there were 13 sovereignties all pulling against each other, then they would “soon bring ruin on the whole” (Sylvester 1999, 23). The situation deteriorated even further after the Peace Treaty was signed in 1783 when some of the states began to breach  the agreements reached in the treaty. Britain refused to enter into commercial arrangements with the United States because it did not believe these arrangements could be enforced by the federal government. It was accepted that this problem had to be solved, and many of the issues were dealt with when the Constitution was agreed. It was then clear that international law took precedence over municipal law and that only the federal government had the authority to adjudicate on international law. This was a significant step in the direction toward becoming an unquestioned member of the international society. But this was not just a pragmatic move, and the Americans also accepted the views developed by Grotius about the desirability of an international society defined by the primary institutions identified by the English School and, in particular, international law. The Market

The market only emerged as a primary institution of international society in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It arose as a counterpoint to the mercantilist doctrine of economic nationalism that had dominated European international society for the previous two centuries. Its main operational principles were free trade, the gold standard, and open movement of labor (Buzan and Falkner 2022; forthcoming: ch. 4). The United States needed to import and export on a large scale, and therefore, always had a big interest in maintaining the smooth flow of trade. But increasingly, it also had a growing

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interest as an industrializing power, needing to protect its infant industries against competition from Britain’s better-established manufacturers. The working of the market thus helps to explain the existence of very powerful and conflicting sectional interests in the United States. The northern states wanted to impose tariffs on imports to help protect the nascent industrial base, while the southern states wished to promote free trade because tariffs would push up the cost of their agricultural products. These differences had profound effects on both how the Constitution was drawn up to ensure that the economic interests of the northern and southern states were accommodated and on the Civil War. Alexander Hamilton was a notable American contributor to the debate about free trade and protection. These differences continued to cause tensions throughout the nineteenth century. Agriculture constituted more than 70% of exports, but, on the other hand, the vast majority of the government’s income was derived from tariffs on imports, some years providing as much as 95% of the government’s income. Clearly, tariffs affect how the market works, and the northern states justified tariffs on the grounds that the governments of foreign competitors provided their industries with subsidies. One way of alleviating the tensions with the southern states was to use revenue from the tariffs toward improving the transport system and thereby increasing the level of internal trade. First introduced with the Tariff Act of 1789, the centrality of tariffs in government financing persisted until the start of the twentieth century when in 1913, the government introduced income tax, by which time American industry no longer required protection (Halloran 2019). Yet, in other ways, the United States was a major player supporting the principles and practices of the market. This was certainly so in its embrace of individualistic capitalism in its domestic political economy. And its internal tensions did not prevent the United States being an enthusiastic, and sometimes militarily active, supporter of creating and maintaining an “open door” for trade with China and Japan. The United States signed onto the gold standard in 1873, and despite sometimes fierce domestic opposition, stayed there until the First World War. The gold standard created a stable exchange rate among those countries adhering to it, in effect operating as a single currency. Big discoveries of gold in the country gave it an important role in increasing the supply, without which the price of gold would have become painfully high. An expanding United States also needed workers and settlers and therefore accepted the open movement of labor. Rising wages in North America during the nineteenth century helped to precipitate mass migration from Europe to the United States (O’Rourke and Williamson 1999). That said, the United States eventually went along with the British-led campaign to abolish the slave trade. The slave trade had been a very long-standing form of labor market throughout the world. But during the nineteenth century, forced labor gave way to wage labor, and it became

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unacceptable within international society to trade human beings directly as a commodity. Especially during the early years of independence, concerns about trade were inextricably bound up with both sovereignty and international law. To secure its position, the United States had to ensure that its sovereignty was recognized by international society and also convince member states that it was unequivocally committed to applying international law. Neither task proved straightforward. Britain had refused to sign a commercial treaty with the United States even after the 1783 Paris Peace Treaty because of treaty violations. As a consequence, while British goods were flooding into the United States, American exports were blocked by British trade restrictions and tariffs. In 1794, however, a series of disputes were resolved, and the two states signed the Jay Treaty, which included commercial provisions securing “most favored nation” status for the United States. During the nineteenth century, the emerging institution of the market impacted heavily on most states and peoples. The United States did not escape this and was, in some respects, a significant player in both supporting and opposing aspects of the market. War

During the nineteenth century, war was a prominent institution of international society. The resort to war was legitimate for a wide range of purposes. War was a necessary backup to the balance of power. Territory, people, and property captured in war could be kept legitimately. In this type of power– political international society, the ability to wage war was a necessary condition of sovereignty. The United States was, of course, forged in the process of fighting a war of independence from Britain and fought it again in the War of 1812. The constitutional changes of 1788 were in part about consolidating the country’s ability to engage in war. Its authority was extended, and the constituent states agreed that the federal government should be responsible for foreign relations, including the declaration of war, in the hands of Congress and the conduct of war in the hands of the president in his role as Commander-in-Chief. As noted, the United States was keen from the start not just to keep the balance of power out of North America but also to isolate itself from the warfare system associated with Europe’s balance of power. After the peace with Britain, its standing army was effectively disbanded. The country was shielded by two broad oceans and sought to distance itself from foreign wars as much as possible (Stivachtis, Chapter 4). Yet, despite its considerable success at staying out of Europe’s wars, the United States could not avoid war altogether. And while it was keen to stay out of European wars, it had no problem with the principle that what was won in war could be legitimately

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kept. That principle underpinned not only the continental expansion of the United States at the expense of Spain, Mexico, and the indigenous first nations but also its late-nineteenth century takeover of parts of the Spanish empire in 1898. The United States used the threat of force to open Japan in 1853 and also participated in the eight-power intervention in China in 1900. The United States needed an army primarily for continental expansion and to defeat and to suppress the indigenous Indians. An expanding country creates ambiguities about the boundary between domestic and international, but arguably the army was mainly domestic in its purposes, including the American Civil War. The navy was initially used in wars with the British and, from 1801 to 1815, in multinational battles to suppress the Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean (Lambert 2005). Naval power played a role in the Civil War, but it was not until the 1880s that the United States decided to build a modern steam navy. That navy was a major step up in the country’s capacity for war and a key to both its colonial acquisitions in the Pacific, and its claims for great power status in international society. The early history of the United States has some quite powerful implications for IR theory. Deudney (1995), for example, used the example of the pre-Civil War United States to challenge the sharp distinction drawn by realists between domestic and international politics. For realists, domestic politics is characterized by hierarchy, while international politics is defined by anarchy. Deudney argues that the Philadelphia System established by the founding fathers did not fit into either camp, and he identifies the antebellum United States in terms of negarchy.1 There are other historical examples of this phenomenon, and the founding fathers drew on theorists like Montesquieu to develop an understanding of such a system. From an English School perspective, however, the United States quickly discovered that operating in an international society where war was a primary institution, the federal government required effective military and naval forces that operated under its authority. Diplomacy

Even before the 13 colonies endeavored to establish their independence from Britain, it was acknowledged that it would be necessary to establish diplomatic channels with Britain and the other European states. But there was nevertheless a profound suspicion of traditional diplomacy and the complex etiquette that underpinned the institution. Diplomacy was associated with a dynastic system that the founding fathers wanted no part of. Their thinking was influenced by, among others, the British Whig politician James

1  Deudney (1995, 208) defines negarchy as “the arrangement of institutions necessary to prevent simultaneously the emergence of hierarchy and anarchy.”

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Burgh whose book Political Disquisitions (1774) denounced the balance of power and traditional diplomacy. When Thomas Jefferson was President at the beginning of the nineteenth century, he recommended that members of Congress read the book. After the revolutionary war started, Congress immediately set about drafting a Model Treaty as a template for commercial treaties which the Americans wished to establish with European states and thereby generate the income needed to fight the war with Britain. The Americans also hoped that commerce could form the foundations for a new kind of diplomacy, and Congress appointed three commissioners to take the Model Treaty around several capitals of Europe. But although the astute Benjamin Franklin succeeded in establishing in 1778 The Treaty of Amity and Commerce as well as a Treaty of Alliance with France, the other missions came to nothing at that time, and the commercial treaty with France required the Americans to give substantial ground during the negotiations. Over the next 10 years, a series of commercial treaties were signed in other capitals, and so the first diplomatic initiative by the United States had a degree of success (Burnett 1911), but it was recognized during that period that successful diplomacy, as with sovereignty, international law, and war, would require a more centralized government. The State Department was established in 1789, and the United States had to negotiate the arcane and complex world associated with the institution of diplomacy. Singer and Small (1966) argue that by looking at the number of diplomatic missions that are located in any country and the rank of the top official in each mission, it becomes possible to identify the status of a country in the diplomatic pecking order. It is then possible to extract from the results how the diplomatic status of the United States changed across the nineteenth century. What Table 12.1 reveals is that despite its reservations, from a very early stage in its history, the United States had to accept the conventions of international society around diplomacy and was very heavily engaged in diplomatic practice. Colonialism

Colonialism emerged as a crucial primary institution in European international society from the sixteenth century onward. Overseas colonies represent an important element of the English School’s account of the global expansion of international society. According to the conventional account, the United States was formed from the first set of 13 European colonies to achieve independence, and their decolonization provided the template for the way almost all of the remaining European colonies eventually decolonized. But as far as the expansion of international society is concerned, the process began long before the end of the eighteenth century when the United

224  Barry Buzan and Richard Little TABLE 12.1 Diplomatic Ranking of the United States in the

International Society in the Nineteenth Century Year

1819 1824 1827 1832 1836 1840 1844 1849 1854 1859 1864 1869 1874 1879 1884 1889 1894 1899 1904 1909 1914

Diplomatic Rank of the United States in International Society

Number of States in International Society

17 10 13 13 7 7 5 4 3 3 5 3 4 5 6 5 6 5 4 2 1

23 23 24 28 28 31 35 39 40 42 39 34 31 34 35 38 38 41 42 43 43

Source: Extracted from Singer and Small (1966).

States emerged. A more comprehensive account identifies three phases. The first represents a competitive phase when the balance of power pressured the maritime European states to start colonizing North America. A second phase started after the decolonization of the thirteen colonies and the subsequent expansion of the United States across the continent. This involved a distinctive process that was unique at that time to the formation of the United States. During the third phase, the United States engaged in overseas expansion and acquired a number of its own overseas colonies. In the beginning, the United States was opposed to colonialism, having defined itself against it. Its own program of continental expansion nevertheless mirrored colonial practice in many ways, including expropriation of territory by force and ethnic cleansing of unwanted inhabitants. Where it differed was that the acquired territories were fully absorbed into the Constitution of the United States. By the end of the century, the United States had largely conformed in practice to the European norms and was acquiring an overseas colonial empire of its own.

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When the European empires, French, British, and Spanish expanded into North America, they encountered an indigenous Indian population that was too powerful to subdue or eliminate. For over two centuries, they had to reach accommodations with the Indians on the basis of commercial and military treaties. The accommodations reached by the Europeans and the Indians were not based on equality because the European colonial officials did not see the Indians as their peers. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Indians operated as independent actors “because of their ability to play empires off against each other, to demand gifts and to counter the logic of economic markets” (White 2002). The accommodation thus saw the emergence of legal pluralism whereby the Europeans and Indians were able to operate within their own distinct regimes (Benton 2007). The subsequent expansion of the international society in North America took place on very different terms after the formation of the United States (Hamalainen 2019 and Rossi, Chapter 6). The third phase in the American dimension of the expansion of the international society (the second phase will be discussed in Part 2) involves the acquisition of colonies by the United States and the establishment of an insular or overseas empire. The initial colonies were acquired at the end of the 1898 war with Spain when the Americans took over what remained of the Spanish empire: Puerto Rico in the Caribbean and Guam and the Philippines in the Pacific. The Supreme Court had to determine whether the people in the newly acquired territories were citizens. The Court concluded that these were “unincorporated territories” and Edling (2021) argues that they were, therefore, not on a route to becoming new states in the United States, and the Court asserted that these unincorporated territories lacked full constitutional protection because they were inhabited by “alien races.” Unsurprisingly, these rulings are often seen to provide a constitutional justification for colonialism. Hopkins (2018) argues, moreover, that there was nothing exceptional about this development; the United States was simply following along in the wake left by the West Europeans maritime empires, which Del Pero (2019), like Hopkins, sees as “agents of global integration.” Great Power Management

During the nineteenth century, great power management was an emergent primary institution, replacing the earlier dynastic logic of European international relations. In Europe, it was manifested after 1815 in the Concert of Europe, in which the United States did not participate until quite late. In line with its desire to keep remote from the European balance of power and its associated wars, the United States played little role in great power management until the end of the nineteenth century. The key point is that for most of this century, the United States was not a great power. Yet, arguably, one of its

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main concerns was to forge itself into one, which was the aim of its continental expansion program. During that process, via the Monroe Doctrine first proclaimed in 1823, it did its best to keep the Western Hemisphere free from European intervention. This could be read both as part of its anti-colonial stance and as the beginning of its own claim to great power management within its sphere of influence. From the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, to the Alaska Purchase in 1867, the United States quickly expanded to reach from coast-to-coast, laying the foundations for its claim to great power status. Clinton (Chapter 11) and Sharp (Chapter 5) give clear accounts of the United States moving in this direction across the nineteenth century and in the process, becoming increasingly involved in international society. Eventually, the United States had cleared North America of the Europeans apart from the British in Canada, who remained stubbornly resistant to American pressure. Once established as a recognized great power, the United States began to participate in great power management, as in its 1900 contribution to the eight-power intervention in China mentioned earlier. Part 2—The Impact of the United States on Primary Institutions Sovereignty

As a fledgling, and trade-dependent, state, the United States had no alternative but to follow the established rules required to demonstrate that it constituted a sovereign state. Nevertheless, the United States also charted a new route for achieving recognition as a member of the international society. First, it issued a declaration of independence. Then it drafted and circulated a written Constitution. Finally, it successfully demonstrated that it had the capacity to implement the Constitution. The United States was, therefore, the first postcolonial republic to use the establishment of a Constitution as part of a strategy to achieve international recognition, but it was certainly not the last (Golove and Hulsebosch 2018, 1061–1065). By 1826, 20 other states had made proclamations of independence—in northern and southern Europe, the Caribbean, and South America. Today over a hundred states have made Declarations of Independence. All drew inspiration from the United States, and many make explicit reference to the 1776 Declaration (Armitage 2008). Additionally, as Fabry (Chapter 8) makes clear, the United States quickly began to challenge the way that some European states wished to respond to the emergence of independence movements in the Western Hemisphere. In Europe, dynastism was still an important institutional element of international society. At the end of the Napoleonic War, the Russian Czar formed a Holy Alliance that aimed to restore dynastic monarchs threatened by revolutionaries. While the United States had no intention of becoming involved in

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European politics, they were forming clear views about the rule that should prevail in the Western Hemisphere. At that time, moves were being made in South America to escape colonial rule. The Holy Alliance not only denied the legitimacy of such developments, but it also claimed a right to use force to maintain Spanish rule in South America. The United States immediately attempted to delegitimize such a right. It began to promote the idea that when domestic disturbance occurred, sovereign states should pursue a strict policy of nonintervention. But it also wished to acknowledge that if internal conflict developed to the point of Civil War, then both parties should be recognized as belligerents, and outside parties should pursue a strict policy of neutrality. The United States insisted that it would only recognize a new state as sovereign if a putative government had decisively defeated the incumbent government and had unequivocal control of the domestic situation. As Stivachtis (Chapter 4) shows, although the United States equivocated on this position in the case of the conflict over Greek independence, it eventually pulled back from a premature recognition of Greece as a sovereign state. Fabry (Chapter 8) also argues that the transformations in some significant practices of sovereignty initiated by the United States, albeit reinforced by Britain, gave rise to a fundamental change in the international society, with its orientation moving from “dynastic solidarism to liberal pluralism.” The United States was thus a significant player in the steady shift from dynastic to popular sovereignty that was a feature of nineteenth-century international society. The Balance of Power

Although the loss of Britain’s colonies and the formation of the United States inevitably had a significant impact on the European balance of power, from the onset, the founding fathers had ambitions that would, in the long term, have even bigger consequences for the future of the international society. Both Britain and the United States assumed that the United States would expand in the future. Indeed, this assumption was built into the 1783 Peace Treaty in Article 2, where the British conceded dominion to the United States over the Northwest Territory, an immense region in the continental interior. As Sharp (Chapter 5) makes clear, the United States saw the Americas forming a distinctive hemisphere where, as Jefferson put it, the Americans could form their own system with their own interests, distinct from those of Europe. The United States quickly saw itself as constituting a rising power that would eventually extend across the whole of North America. For much of the nineteenth century, there was a strong desire to see Canada become part of the United States. By the same token, as Green (Chapter 7) notes, the 1850 Clayton– Bulwer Treaty in which Britain and the United States agreed that neither country would attempt to exercise any dominion over Central America was

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the most persistently unpopular pact ever signed by the United States because it placed a strict limit on any further southern expansion of the United States. In the 1840s, when the British and French insisted on the desirability of maintaining a balance of power in North America, President Polk was outraged, and he insisted that there was no place for the balance of power on the continent. The United States was clear from very early on that it had three aims in relation to the balance of power. The first was that it wanted to keep out of the European balance system. The second was that it wished to make itself into a recognized great power as quickly as possible. The third was that it wished to altogether exclude the balance of power as both practice and institution from the Western Hemisphere. This third goal was much the most radical. In principle, it greatly extended the geographical reach of the United States’ rejection of the balance of power as an institution of any international society of which it was a part. It could be argued that the United States was trying to set up a separate international society for the Americas. In practice, it required not only that the United States achieve hegemonic status within the Western Hemisphere but also that it be a strong enough great power to keep all Eastern Hemisphere great powers out. During the nineteenth century, it succeeded in all three goals, albeit at the cost of a major Civil War. International Law

As the United States was endeavoring to establish its independence, the initial moves were being made in Europe to provide a positivist basis for the foundations of international law such that law is made by states as exemplified in treaties and customs. Bentham advocated this approach and coined the term international law in 1780. By contrast, the founding fathers were steeped in the ideas of natural law jurists like Grotius and Vattel. For them, the prevailing law of nations was underpinned by a law of nature that was based on the idea that individuals have inherent rights that are not conferred by legislation but by God, nature, or reason. The conventional view is that international law was increasingly defined in positivist terms during the nineteenth century at the expense of natural law as the volume of case law exploded (Banner 2021). However, it is now being acknowledged that although positivist law became increasingly prominent during the nineteenth century in the United States as in Europe, natural law retained a significant presence, and the influence of positivism in the nineteenth century has been exaggerated (Malksoo 2017; Hall 2001). International law has always been a defining feature of international society for the United States, and during the course of the nineteenth century, the country began to play an increasingly important role in its evolution. As Rossi (Chapter 6) and Navari (Chapter 9) make clear, for example, it was the

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American approach to international law that was most widely propagated in Asia during the nineteenth century by means of the American professor Henry Wheaton’s Elements of International Law. The book also became one of the most important nineteenth-century texts on international law in the Western world, where, for the first time, the rights of states were depicted as forming the basis of international law, clearly, denoting the elimination of dynasticism from international society. It presented the American interpretation of international law, and so, perhaps unsurprisingly, Wheaton was still working broadly within the natural law tradition, and his text was designed to counter the growing trend toward positivism. He paid homage to Grotius and the “international law of Christendom,” which operated among civilized states and insisted that international law was necessarily restricted to a group of like-minded states which shared a common culture (Janis 2010). The same phenomenon was true in Europe where an important Scottish scholar like James Lorimer also defended the natural law tradition but confined the application of international law to the Europeans and Americans who were sharply distinguished from barbarians and savages (Koskenniemi 2016). Stelder (2022) takes this argument further and traces this thinking back to Grotius, who argued that when the land was not properly cultivated, this rendered the land res nullius, unclaimed, in other words. This assessment was applied to the indigenous inhabitants, and Grotius asserted, as a consequence, that their land was therefore waiting to be possessed by the Dutch. The Americans extended this line of thinking and used international law to dispossess the indigenous population. Given the orientation of natural law thinkers, it is ironic that it was Wheaton’s text that was read by an Asian audience in the nineteenth century. However, the impact of translations of the book into Chinese is debatable. Cheung and Fung (2018) note that a contemporary Chinese historian asserts that over time the Western, or rather American, understanding of international law was slowly internalized by Chinese officials and, as a consequence, by the 1870s, the Qing government was beginning to recognize the unequal nature of the treaties signed with the West and endeavored to amend the treaties. But Cheung and Fung (2018) insist that the translation was completely inadequate and that there was no real understanding of Western international law by Chinese officials because the cultural gap was too large. There is no such ambiguity in the case of Japan, where the country quickly learned to deploy Western international law in pursuit of regaining its sovereign equality and being acknowledged as a great power (Howland 2016). By contrast to the use of international law to dispossess the indigenous population, the United States was at the forefront of attempts to resolve disputes without resorting to war. In the 1794 Jay Treaty, for example, which aimed to resolve some of the disputes that persisted between Britain and the

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United States after the end of the independence war, the two parties agreed that disputes over wartime debts and the American–Canadian boundary could be settled by arbitration. This was one of the first occasions when arbitration was used in this way in modern times, and it paved the way for other states to follow. However, Britain and the United States resorted to arbitration more than any other states in the nineteenth century, lending weight to the discussion by Green (Chapter 7) about British International society. But it is worth noting that South and Central America followed closely behind (Harris 2016). Nevertheless, it was the United States and Britain that led the way on this, although, as Durfee (Chapter 10) notes, the United States failed to include provision for arbitration with any of the other states that it established treaties with at that time. But it was a start, and Harris (2016) argues that over time it has become a regular feature of growing importance. The Market

As noted, the market was slow to get going as an institution of international society during the nineteenth century. After the Napoleonic Wars, Britain continued to favor a mercantilist market, with tariffs on imports and, in particular, foodstuffs and also protected its shipping. But in 1846, Britain began to promote a global free trade market. Tariffs from imported grain were ended, and in 1849, the Navigation Acts were repealed. The United States at this time was certainly not a leader in promoting the global market. Its policy was very mixed, and in part, oppositional. In relation to trade, the country was mainly protectionist, using high tariffs to protect its nascent industries (O’Brien and Pigman 1992). But it was relatively open to the movement of labor and capital, and it supported the gold standard. Although generally in favor of economic nationalism, the country’s bilateral relations with Britain did support aspects of the market from an early stage. The 1794 Jay Treaty aimed to restore the commercial relations that had existed between Britain and the American colonies. Commercial actors on both sides of the Atlantic wished to insulate commercial relations from the political differences that persisted after the independence war. The post-imperial relationship was negotiated on the basis of mutual interests and international law and was certainly not imposed on the United States by Britain. British investment increased enormously after the treaty was signed, and by the time the 1812 war broke out, the British were the largest holders of foreign investment in the United States and owned half of all the federal government’s public debt (Hulsebosch 2018a). Throughout the nineteenth century, Anglo–American commercial relations reflected the spirit of liberal internationalism. A number of principles associated with modern investment law and dispute resolution found their origins in the nascent United States as the British and Americans restructured their trade relations (Hulsebosch 2018a).

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At the same time, as both Navari (Chapter 2) and Green (Chapter 7) make clear, the United States played a significant role in opening a new trade route to Asia across the Pacific. While this might be seen as drawing Japan and China into the global market, it is probably best understood as part of America being drawn into the practices of European colonialism. The Asian giants were not seen by the Europeans or the Americans as “civilised.” Rather than being drawn into market relations between equals, they were subjected to unequal treaties, more reflecting the core-periphery relations of the metropolitan powers with their colonies. Japan did not regain control over its tariffs until the 1890s and only got equal status in its alliance with Britain in 1902. China’s tariffs remained under foreign control until the 1930s, and it did not get recognition as an equal until the middle of the Second World War. War

Although the United States was confronted by substantial military and naval threats when it entered the international society, there was a determination to avoid becoming entangled in a European land war. From its inception, therefore, the United States demonstrated a keen interest in the international rules surrounding neutrality, and in the 1794 Neutrality Act, it became the first state to criminalize a range of activities in domestic law as violations of the United States’ neutrality stance, including fitting out a vessel to serve as a belligerent, enlisting in a foreign military, and establishing a private military expedition (Ashe 2022, and Lobel 1983). In 1862, Britain was seen to have violated its neutral position during the American Civil War when it failed to prevent Alabama from being constructed and fitted out for war in Liverpool at the request of Confederate agents. The vessel went on to cause significant damage to northern shipping. The resulting dispute was included in a range of issues that the two states endeavored to resolve in the 1871 Treaty of Washington. The case was taken to international arbitration, and Britain agreed to pay substantial compensation. For the first time, it was also agreed in the treaty that neutral nations had a duty “of due diligence” to prevent their territory from being used to launch hostile military expeditions against friendly nations. This provision has become a widely accepted principle of international law (Ashe 2022). The British also signed the Foreign Enlistment Act (1870), which almost replicates the text used in the 1794 Neutrality Act, acknowledging the importance of the United States in consolidating the rules underpinning neutrality. The United States also played an important role in codifying the laws of war. In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Lincoln issued the Lieber Code that dictated how the union forces should conduct themselves in wartime. It was written from the perspective of “modern civilized

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nations” and presupposed that “Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God.” Franz Lieber, a professor of history and political science, was asked by the Secretary of War to revise the 1806 Articles of War, and the resulting Code is often considered to be the first time that the customary law of war had been codified and written down. It had a wide range of provisions, including prohibitions on torture and rape. But the only enforcement mechanism was the right of a military commander to order the immediate execution of a guilty soldier. The Lieber Code was extremely influential on the agreements reached at the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions which set out laws of land and naval warfare. Diplomacy

Although the United States soon recognized that it had no alternative but to participate fully in the diplomatic system, from the beginning, there was a determination to do so on its own terms. America strongly disliked the hierarchy associated with diplomatic representatives and associated the role of ambassador with the monarchical and dynastic regimes that still dominated Europe. As a consequence, the United States refused to appoint ambassadors. Thomas Jefferson, who became the first Secretary of State in 1790, decided, in consultation with President Washington, only to send ministers to France and Britain and charges d’affaires to Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, despite important links with these countries. This move reflected Jefferson’s disdain for traditional diplomacy. Earlier in his career, he believed that diplomats were unnecessary and even harmful. The refusal to appoint ambassadors remained in place until 1893, when President Cleveland appointed an ambassador to the United Kingdom. In Europe, by contrast, by 1870, it was almost universal practice for the great powers to exchange ambassadors. Cleveland’s abrupt decision to appoint ambassadors reflected a growing acknowledgment that the political orientations of Europe and the United States had grown much closer during the course of the nineteenth century. The Americans were now much more willing to accept that the exchange of ambassadors was a symbolic recognition that the United States was a prestigious member of international society. But it was also an acknowledgment that some diplomatic protocol did, in fact, facilitate the quotidian work of American diplomats (Nickles 2008). By contrast, the American attitude to the costumes of diplomats steadily hardened during the nineteenth century. In 1867 Congress resolved that “all persons in the diplomatic service of the United States are prohibited from wearing any uniform or official costume not previously authorized by Congress” (Nickles 2008, 304). But in this case, the United States was leading the way, and during the course of the twentieth century, most other members of the international society followed in its wake.

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The approach of the United States was much more ambivalent when it came to questions arising from the expansion of international society during the nineteenth century. In principle, the United States was committed to the principles justifying the sovereign equality of states. But like other European states, the Americans also wrestled with the issue of whether diplomatic rules were universal or only applied to “civilized,” that is, Christian, countries. As the entry of Turkey, Japan, and China into international society came under discussion, some Americans adopted a cosmopolitan posture, and by the end of the century, most American diplomats accepted that religious differences should not adversely affect diplomatic intercourse. By the end of the nineteenth century, therefore, the United States acknowledged the continuing relevance of diplomacy but at the same time made attempts to modernize diplomatic protocol. Colonialism

As argued above, during the nineteenth century, the United States moved from an anti-colonial position to one broadly compatible with European colonialism regarding overseas colonies. But the second phase of continental expansion in North America shows a very different story. While, like other colonial powers, the United States denied rights to indigenous peoples, it expanded in such a way as to extend its federal political structure in an otherwise egalitarian way. During the nineteenth century, the decolonized United States transformed how international society operated across the American continent. Even before the United States formed, the American revolutionaries were determined to establish an “empire of liberty” which would embrace the whole continent (Drake 2011). By contrast, Britain, Spain, and France wanted to see the region between the Appalachians and the Mississippi dominated by the Indians so as to form a buffer zone to stall the expansion of the decolonized states in the Appalachians (Furstenberg 2008). A key aim of the Constitution, therefore, was to ensure that only the federal government had the authority to negotiate with the Indians and the ability to regulate the expansion process. But the intention was to ensure that the imperial drive to the West reflected the standards of federalism and republicanism and that the American continental empire should be sharply distinguished from the European maritime empires. As Edling (2021) argues, the “vague and elastic meaning of ‘empire’ in early modern political discourse explains why American statesmen and political writers saw no incongruity in calling the United States an ‘empire’ despite embracing republicanism and federalism.” Pocock (1987, 715) argues that at that time, empire, confederation, and republic could all “be used to denote political systems of indefinite extent and multiple structure, and to denote very little more.”

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The Americans had to acknowledge that the European empires had rights under international law, and so they could remove the Europeans only by working within the context of international society. But from a very early stage, they wished to establish that the indigenous nations had no rights within the framework of the international society (Sadosky 2009). By a complex set of legal processes discussed by Rossi (Chapter 6), the Americans effectively removed the Indians from international society (Robertson 2007; Miller 2012; Golove and Hulsebosch 2021,1869–71). The grounds for denying the Indian nations their sovereign rights included being deemed pagan savages (Newcomb 2008). But during the nineteenth century, legal practice began to change on the ground as sovereignty, territory, and jurisdiction were brought into alignment. This then became the defining feature of sovereignty in international society, although it was “uniquely destructive of indigenous rights’” (Ford 2011, 2). As the first settler colonies to become independent, the United States had “a special potential to fold colonization into modern statehood” (Ford 2011, 6). To the extent that it was accepted that the indigenous population had some residual territorial rights, it was argued that the land would have to be held in trust for them by the American government because indigenous nations lacked the necessary standard of civilization to own property in their own right. The Constitution acknowledged the potential for expansion, and provision was made for two distinctive jurisdictional spaces. In the East was a union of republics, and in the West was a complex and expanding area of federal territories, unorganized land, and Indian territory, which were eventually transformed into additional republics. The transformation took place in two stages. First, the federal territories were governed by Congress until a putative state contained 60,000 free inhabitants; at that point, these settlers could write a Constitution and apply to join the union. If accepted, then the Constitution stated that the new state would join the union “on an equal footing with the original States.” Thirty-seven new states had emerged by 1912, although the process was not always straightforward. New Mexico was initially denied statehood because most of the population was of Spanish and mixed Spanish and Indian descent. Only when the territory had taken in enough white migrants could it achieve statehood and join the union (Hulsebosch 2018b). For the same reason, the colonies making up the overseas empire were not during the nineteenth century considered as potential states. Historians now hotly dispute whether or not it is appropriate to identify the United States as an expanding empire during the nineteenth century, and comparisons are drawn with Russian expansion. Colley (2006,182) insists that the comparison is apt and that it is important to recognize how “successful, overland empires can segue into apparently uncontroversial nation states.” Since Colley made this argument, a flood of books have bolstered

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the idea of the United States as a land empire during the nineteenth century (Dierksheide 2020). But Hopkins (2018) and Edling (2021) make a plausible case to contest this position because, in contrast to Russia, the United States expanded by creating new states that had equal constitutional rights with the existing states. Certainly, from an English School perspective, whether the United States is defined as an empire or not, Hopkins and Edling reveal the very distinctive way that the expansion of the United States transformed the position of the continent within the international society. But it also demonstrates that colonialism is a more complex institution than is sometimes recognized. In contrast to the African and Asian colonies, the indigenous populations in North America, as in New Zealand and Australia, were overwhelmed by the colonizing population. So, as Hopkins (2019) argues, imperialist or colonizing intentions “can produce different results.” Great Power Management

It is clear that the existence of this institution had a big influence on the United States in shaping its desire to become a great power. But since the United States did not become a great power until quite late in the century, its opportunities to influence this institution were limited. It is generally accepted that the United States did not become a great power until the end of the nineteenth century. Given that it successfully removed the four European great powers occupying territory that eventually formed the United States and given its relatively high diplomatic status throughout the nineteenth century, this assessment seems open to question. Curiously Singer and Small (1966) agree with it, although they do note that the United States moved to the top end of the diplomatic status ranking 60 years before becoming an acknowledged great power. From their perspective, great powers must operate at the center rather than the periphery of the international system. States are identified at the center if they are “active and influential in Europeancentered diplomacy,” but they then rely on “scholarly consensus” to determine the location of a state, and the United States only moves into the center after its “easy victory over Spain in 1898” (Singer and Small 1966, 247–8). The English School takes a different tack because they focus on international society rather than the international system. As Cui and Buzan (2016) make clear, states establish their credentials as great powers by “accepting special responsibilities as well as claiming special rights.” If we accept this as a starting point, then there is little doubt that the United States had aspirations to be a great power from its origins. Initially, this was expressed in terms of wishing to use commercial treaties to transform the very essence of international relations and promote a peaceful international society (Gilbert 1961). But by the time the United States had been recognized as a member of the international society, its orientation was already changing. There was a determination to remove European influence from the Western

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Hemisphere. By the end of the 1840s, the British were certainly treating the United States as an equal in respect of their relative power positions in the Western Hemisphere, and their differences over Central America were settled by treaty on the basis of great power management (Sharp Chapter 5). From the American perspective, they undoubtedly assumed that they had “special responsibilities” and “special rights” with regard to the Western Hemisphere. But while the United States could play the great power in the Western Hemisphere, it did not yet measure up to the European powers on a global scale. Clinton (Chapter 11) mounts a powerful case that it was only around 1900 that the United States displayed a pronounced readiness to join with other great powers in performing the task of great power management and, indeed, consider itself as a great power. But this underplays the fact that the United States attempted before it was even recognized as a sovereign state to influence how Europe operated. The Continental Convention wished Europe and the Americas to operate on the basis of commercial relationships that they hoped would lead to the elimination of the balance of power. Although often depicted as naïve, they could also be viewed as very far sighted, and certainly, the economies of Europe and the United States were inextricably locked together throughout the nineteenth century. But it was increasingly obvious as the century progressed that the United States would quite quickly become the dominant economy in the world. The Europeans did not fear the rising power on the other side of the Atlantic but only because of the ocean that separated them. The United States may not have participated seriously with the other great powers in collectively managing international society in Europe, but it was unequivocally interested in changing the international society for the better. Conclusions

To sum up, it is clear that during the nineteenth century, the relationship between the United States and the primary institutions of international society was a busy two-way street. To describe the United States during this time as isolationist, and leave it at that, is wholly inadequate. On one side of the street, as a fledgling state and initially a weak power, the development of the United States was strongly influenced by its need to operate, and indeed survive, within international society. The existence of that society pushed the young United States to strengthen its federal level of government, set it the aim of becoming a great power, required it to adhere to the conventions of international law and diplomacy, and confronted it with dilemmas about colonialism, war, and the market. Some of these dilemmas are ongoing. The Americans had to eliminate the sovereign rights ascribed to the Indian population by the Europeans, removing them from international society. Other settler societies such as Australia and

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New Zealand, followed the same route and, like the Americans, are living with the consequences. On the other side of the street, the United States helped to push sovereignty and diplomacy from a dynastic basis to a popular sovereignty one, strengthened commercial practices, and challenged European norms and practices on the balance of power and war. It also largely pushed European international society out of the Western Hemisphere and sought to build a distinct form of international society within that sphere. Here, perhaps, lies the key to the dilemma of when the United States became a great power. It was able to behave as a great power in the Western Hemisphere much earlier than it could do so in the wider world. This was much enabled by the geographical remoteness of the Americas from Europe, which is what allowed the United States to play as equals with Britain on business to do with the Western Hemisphere. Within that hemisphere, the United States got to play the role of hegemonic great power while at the same time staying largely out of global great power balancing and management. In a sense, the Western Hemisphere gave the United States an apprenticeship period as a great power, allowing it to think and up to a point behave, differently from the norms of European international society. When it qualified as a global great power by defeating Spain in 1898, becoming an overseas colonial power, and sailing its “great white fleet” around the world in 1907– 1909, it had already formed a distinctive view of the role. During the nineteenth century, European international society was anyway undergoing a transformation from agrarian to modern form (Buzan 2023: chs. 4, 5a, 5b). As the first state born within the transition toward modernity, the United States was an important player in that transformation, both in terms of the distribution of power and of the ideas constituting international society. This is a story that the English School has hitherto neglected to tell and the United States’ academic community has largely ignored. We hope this book opens the door toward ending this neglect on both sides. Neither the story of the United States itself nor the story of the expansion/globalization of international society can be told without each taking the other into account. References Armitage, D. (2008). The declaration of independence: A global history. London: Harvard University Press. Ashe, B.E. (2022). Quelling the urge to go abroad ‘In search of monsters to destroy’: Revising the neutrality act of 1794 to meet the twenty-first century challenge of privatized war. Wisconsin International Law Journal, 39(1): 144–174. Banner, S. (2021). The decline of natural law: How American lawyers once used natural law and why they stopped. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Benton, L. (2007). Law and colonial cultures: Legal regimes in world history 1400– 1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Borschberg, P. (2011). Grotius, the Portuguese and free trade in the East Indies. Singapore: NUS Press. Boukema, H.J.M. (1983). Grotius’ concept of law. Archives for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, 69(1): 68–73. Bull, H., A. Roberts, & B. Kingsbury (2003). Hugo Grotius and international relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burnett, E.C. (1911). ‘Note on American negotiations for commercial treaties, 1776–1786. The American Historical Review 16(3): 579–587. Buzan, B. & R. Falkner (2022). The market in global international society: A dialectic of contestation and resilience. In T. Flockhart & Z. Paikin (Eds.), Rebooting global international society: Change, contestation, and resilience. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 237–260. Buzan, R. & R. Falkner (2023). The market in global international society. Cheung, E. & M. Fung (2018). The hazards of translating Wheaton’s Elements of International Law into Chinese: Cultures of world order lost in translation. In A. Carty & J. Nijman (Eds.), Morality and responsibility of rulers: European and Chinese origins of a rule of law as justice for world order. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 316–338. Christov, T. (2013). Vattel’s Rousseau: Ius gentium and the natural liberty of states. In Q. Skinner & M. Van Gelderen (Eds.), Freedom and the construction of Europe (Vol. 2, Ch 9). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 167–187. Colley, L. (2006). The difficulties of empire: Present, past and future. Historical Research, 70(205): 367–382. Cui, S. & B. Buzan (2016). Great power management in international society. The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 9(2): 181–210. Del Pedro, M. (2019). Review. In T. Maddox & D. Labrosse (Eds.), Roundtable on A.G.Hopkins The American Empire: A global history. H-Diplo, (Vol. 20, No. 33). https://networks​.h​-net​.org​/node​/28443​/discussions​/4033475​/roundtable​-xx​ -33​-ag​-hopkins​-american​- empire​-global​-history#​_Toc6565745 Deudney, D.H. (1995). The Philadelphian system: Sovereignty, arms control, and balance of power in the American states-union, circa 1787–1861. International Organization 49(2) 191–228. Dierkscheide, C. (2020). US and empire in the nineteenth century. In T. Burnard (Ed.), Bibliographies in Atlantic history. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Drake, J.D. (2011). The nation's nature: How continental presumptions gave rise to the United States of America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Edling, M.M. (2018). Peace pact and nation: An international interpretation of the constitution of the United States. Past & Present, 240(1): 267–303. Edling, M.M. (2021). United States expansion and incorporation in the long nineteenth-century. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 49(3) 431–458. Ford, L. (2011). Settler sovereignty: Jurisdiction and indigenous people in America and Australia, 1788–1836. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Furstenberg, F. (2008). The significance of the trans-Appalachian frontier in Atlantic history. The American Historical Review, 113(3): 647–77.

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Gilbert, F. (1961). To the Farewell Address: Ideas of early American foreign policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Golove, D.M. & D.J. Hulsebosch (2010). A civilized nation: The early American constitution, the law of nations, and the pursuit of recognition. New York Law Review, 85: 932–1066. Golove, D.M. & D.J. Hulsebosch (2018). The law of nations and the constitution: An early modern perspective. The Georgetown Law Journal, 106, 153-1658 Golove, D.M. & D.J. Hulsebosch (2021).The federalist constitution as a project in international law. Fordham Law Review, 89(5): 1841–1876. Hall, S. (2001). The persistent spectre: Natural law, international order and the limits of legal positivism. European Journal of International Law 12(2): 269–307. Halloran, T. (2019). A brief history of tariffs in the United States and the dangers of their use today. Fordham Journal of Corporate and Financial Law, 17. https:// news​.law​.fordham​.edu ​/ jcfl ​/ 2019​/ 03​/17​/a​-brief​-history​- of​-tariffs​-in​-the​-united​ -states​-and​-the​-dangers​-of​-their​-use​-today/ Hamalainen, P. (2019). Lakota America. New Haven: Yale University Press. Harris, S.M. (2016). The global construction of international law in the nineteenth century: The case of arbitration. Journal of World History, 37(2): 303–325. Hopkins, A.G. (2018). American empire: A global history. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hopkins, A.G. (2019). Author’s response. In T. Maddux & D. Labrosse (Eds.), Round table review on A.G.Hopkins American empire: A global history, Diplo-Net (Vol. 20, No. 33). https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/4033475/ roundtable-xx-33-ag-hopkins-american-empire-global-history Howland, D. (2016). International law and Japanese sovereignty: The emerging global order in the 19th century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hulsebosch, D. (2018a). From imperial to international law: Protecting foreign expectations in the early United States. UCLA Law Review Discourse, 65(142). https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=01912102402608400908911308 3104127111054025070 08502209208702109109112207402306401707 5114117055044051060015073087099015091093115016084042033015113111 108080002026096054007079025084093097114121008119110124001107067 096000100093002074116105124084000005073&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE Hulsebosch, D. (2018b). Being seen like a state: How Americans (and Britons) built the constitutional infrastructure of a developing state. William and Mary Law Review, 59 1239–1319. Janis, M.W. (2010). America and the law of nations 1776–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Koskenniemi, M. (2013). International law and the emergence of mercantile capitalism: Grotius to Smith. In P.-M. Dupuy & V. Chetail (Eds.), The roots of international law. Leiden: Brill, 1–37. Koskenniemi, M. (2016). Race, hierarchy and international law: Lorimer’s legal science. In Symposium on James Lorimer. European Journal of International Law, 27(3): 415–429. Lambert, F. (2005). The Barbary wars: American independence in the Atlantic world. New York Hill and Wang.

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Lobel, J. (1983). The rise and decline of the neutrality act: Sovereignty and congressional war powers in United States foreign policy. Harvard International Law Journal, 24(Summer):1–72. Mack, E. (2022). The Free Sea: Hugo Grotius and the right to trade. https://oll​ .libertyfund​.org​/reading​_ room​/Grotius​_ Mack​_Trade Malksoo, L. (2017). Sources of international law in the nineteenth century European tradition: Insight from practice and theory. In J. Aspremont & S. Besson (Eds.), The Oxford handbook on the sources of international law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 146–162. Miller, R.J. (2012). The international law of colonialism: A comparative analysis. Lewis and Clark Law Review, 15(4): 847–922. Newcomb, S.T. (2008). Pagans in the promised land: Decoding the doctrine of Christian discovery. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, Nickles, D.P. (2008). US diplomatic etiquette during the nineteenth century. In M. Mosslang & T. Riotte, (Eds.), The diplomats' world: A cultural history of diplomacy, 1815–1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 287–316. O’Brien P.K. & G.A. Pigman (1992). Free trade, British hegemony and the international economic order in the nineteenth century. Review of International Studies, 18(2): 89–113. O’Rourke, K.H. & J.G. Williamson (1999). Globalization and history: The evolution of a nineteenth century Atlantic economy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pocock, J.G.A. (1987). States, republics, and empires: The American founding in early modern perspective. Social Science Quarterly, 68(4): 703–723. Robertson, L.G. (2007). Conquest by law: How the discovery of America dispossessed indigenous peoples of their lands. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sadosky, L.J. (2009). Revolutionary negotiations: Indians, empires, and diplomats in the founding of America. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. Singer, J.D. & M. Small (1966).The composition and status ordering of the international system: 1815–1940. World Politics, 18(2): 236–282. Stelder, M. (2022). The colonial difference in Hugo Grotius: Rational man, slavery and Indigenous dispossession. Postcolonial Studies, 25(4): 564–583. Sylvester, D.J. (1999). International law as sword or shield? Early American foreign policy and the law of nations. New York University Journal of International Law and Politics, 32(1): 1–88. White, R. (2002). On the beaches. London Review of Books, 24(6), 21 March (Review of Daniel Richter Facing East from Indian country: A native history of early America).

INDEX

Page numbers in bold indicate tables Adams, John 10–12, 33, 39–40, 55, 68, 71–74, 76–77, 180 Adams, John Quincy 50, 61–63, 66–68, 78, 86, 108, 125, 149–150, 152–154 Age of Exploration 7, 17 Aguirre, Manuel Hermnenejildo de 61 Alabama Claims (1871–1872) 104, 231 “Alabama Claims” arbitration 190–191 Alaska Purchase 22, 91, 199, 226 Alexander I 57, 69, 72 Alison, Graham 98 alliances 3 America: and the BIS 122–136; discovery of 6; European settlement in 27–28; Everett on 166; exploitation of 7; globalization of 18–19; in international history 34; as object of international society 6; reliance on Britain 19, 24, 26, 54, 86, 230; war of independence in 11; see also United States American colonies 26, 225; Britain on 39–40; independent natures of 34, 40–41, 216, 219; leaders of 33, 42; union of 44–45, 50, 215; see also states American Colonization Society 107 American history, myths of 34 American Neutrality Act (1794) 148

American Revolution 8, 11–12, 19, 23, 28, 35, 38–39, 44, 178–179 American states, independent natures of 28 Ames, Fisher 47 The Anarchical Society (Bull) 196 Anghie, Antony 171 Anglo–Boer War (1899-1902) 205 Anglo–Venezuelan border dispute (1895) 20 Annual International Studies Association (ISA) Convention (2019) 1 The Antelope (1825) 108–109 Anti-Corn Law League (ACLL) 122 Anti-Federalists 43 arbitration 3, 30, 92, 94, 97, 175–176, 180–181, 190–193, 207, 230; see also conflict resolution; specific treaties Arizona 199 Armitage, David 37–38 Articles of Confederation 34, 39, 41, 176–179, 188, 198 Asian Squadron 25–26 Austin, John 100–101 Austria 144 Bainbridge, William 75 balance of power 3, 122, 164–166, 200, 216–218, 221, 227–228 

242 Index

Balance of Power crisis 128–129 Balfour, Lord 97 Barlow, Joel 59 Battle of Navarino (1827) 78–79 Berlin Conference (1885) 21 Birrell, Kathleen 112 Bluntschli, Johann 103 Bogota 57 Bolivar, Simon 23, 64 Bolton, John 98 Bonaparte, Joseph 56, 64 Bonaparte, Napoleon 56–57, 64 borders 177–178, 180, 188–189, 230 Bradish, Luther 75 Brands, H.W. 179 Brazil 56–57, 121, 133 Briand, Aristide 27 Brierly, J.L. 104 Britain 5, 13, 96, 118–119, 133, 200, 219, 230; and American independence 39–40; Corn Laws 120–121, 129–130, 230; as great power 143; Great Reform Act (1832) 119; and the Holy Alliance 57–58; and Honduras 90; Jefferson's concerns about 48; and Latin America 66; and liberal pluralism 140; Melbourne/Palmerston government (1835-1841) 122; and the Monroe Doctrine 67; Navigation Acts 121, 130, 230; occupations by 46; Open Doors policy 21; and the Pacific Northwest 86; Peel government 120–121, 123, 127–130; reforms in 119–120, 147; Royal Navy 12, 19, 24, 47, 66, 86–87, 107, 119; and the slave trade 119–120, 190, 220–221; and Spain 64; and Texas 123, 127; Trafalgar victory 119; treaties with France 87 British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) 122–123, 135 British colonies 7, 18, 87–88 British East India Company 120, 126 British Guiana 93 British Honduras (Belize) 88 British–India Society 122–123 British International Society (BIS) 13, 118–136, 230 British North America 87, 90–91 British West Indies 87, 119–120, 122, 135 Buchanan, James 88–89, 133, 135, 200

Buchanan, William 206 Bull, Hedley 2–3, 140–141, 196–197, 199, 201, 208 Burgh, James 222–223 Burke, Edmund 19 Burlingame, Anson 167 Buzan, Barry 1–2, 5, 14, 141–143, 215–237 Calhoun, John C. 71, 124, 127 California 88, 124–126 Canada 91–92, 126–127, 133–136, 179, 181–182, 184, 189, 191 Canadian Rebellion (1837-1838) 180 Canning, George 21, 65–67 capitulation treaties 29 Caracas 57 Cass, Lewis 124, 126, 131 Castro, Cipriano 96 Cayuga Indians case 192–193 Chapman, Michael 68–69 Charles II 110 Charles IV 56–57 Cherokee 109; see also Western Cherokee Cheung, E. 229 Chickasaw 109 Chile 62, 192 China 5, 31, 120, 125, 135, 168, 222, 229, 231, 233; and Elements of International Law 166–167; treaties with 21, 125, 168 Chino–Japanese War (1884) 170 Choate, Joseph 210–211 Choctaw 109 citizenship 110, 178, 225; see also jus sanguinis; jus soli Civil War 11, 13, 18, 22–25, 28–29, 34, 46, 90–92, 201, 218, 222, 231; see also Confederate States of America; slavery Claims Convention (1853) 186 classical liberalism 155n3 Clay, Henry 63–64, 73–74 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) 24, 90, 93, 122, 132–136, 181, 186, 188, 199, 227–228 Cleveland, Grover 93, 96, 232 Clinton, David 196–214, 226 Colley, L. 234–235 Colombia 89, 93, 97, 192 colonialism 4, 6, 17, 216, 223–225, 233–235

Index 243

colonies: and empires 17–18; European views of 7–8; growing independence of 7–8, 66; and non-territorialism 121; see also specific countries Commentaries on American Law (Kent) 160–161 commerce, Hamilton on 43 Commerce Treaty (1815) 183 Common Law system 101–103, 180–181 Comte, August 30 Concert of Europe 225 Confederate States of America 24, 29, 92, 151, 155, 178, 218, 231; see also Civil War Conference of Berlin 201–202 conflict resolution 180–181, 182–187, 193; see also arbitration; specific treaties Congo 21 Congress, and the Articles of Confederation 41 Congressional Resolution (1811) 86 Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle 63 Congress of Berlin (1878) 92, 201 Congress of Paris (1856) 201 conquest 111–112 conservation 211–213 Constitutional Convention (1787) 106 constitutional independence 141 constitutive institutions 142–143 Continental Congress 38, 236 Convention of May 7, 1832 78–79 Convention on the Pacific Settlements of Disputes (1899) 192 Cornejo, Mariano 208 The Course of Positive Philosophy (Comte) 30 Court of Arbitral Justice 210 Crawford, William 62 Creek 109 Creoles 56–57 Crimean War 22, 28–29, 90 Crozier, William 203 Cuba 24–26, 30, 56, 90, 93–95, 121, 131, 133, 135–136 Cui, S. 235 Cushing, Caleb 124 Danish Virgin Islands 93 Das Moderne Völkerrecht der Civilisieten Staten als Rechtsbuch dargestellt (Bluntschli) 168

Declaration of Independence (1776) 35, 37–38, 145–146, 150, 219, 226 Declaration of Paris 201 Declaration of the Powers on the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1815) 23 declarations of independence 226 decolonization 14, 18 DeConde, A. 96 Dehio, Ludwig 44–45 Del Pero, M. 225 Democratic Peace Theory 43 Democratic Review 129 Denmark 120, 144 derivative institutions 191–192 Deudney, D. H. 25, 222 Dewey, George 25–26 A Digest of the Law of Maritime Captures and Prizes (Wheaton) 160 diplomacy 3–4, 216–217, 222–223, 224, 232–233 diplomatic costumes 232 Doctrine of Discovery 105, 110 Dominican Republic 20, 91 Dred Scott (1857) 106 Dunant, Henry 103 Dunne, Tim 3 Durfee, Mary 14, 175–193, 230 dynastic legitimacy 144, 147–149, 152 dynastic solidarism 140, 155–156, 227 Edling, M. M. 225, 233, 235 effectiveness 146 Elements of International Law (Wheaton) 13–14, 29–30, 104, 162, 164–165, 171–172, 229; 3rd ed. 162; 4th ed. 159; 6th ed. (Lawrence) 159–160, 163; 7th ed. (Lawrence) 159, 166–169; 8th ed. 159; Dana edition 104, 165–166; Philipson ed. 182n5 Elgin–Marcy Treaty (1854) 134 El Salvador 132 Emancipation Edict (1861, Russia) 23 English, George B. 75 English School (ES) of International Relations 1–2, 6, 84, 136–137, 140–141, 175, 222, 235 English School theory 79, 215 Enlightenment 137 Estrada doctrine 165 Europe, and French/English struggles 54

244 Index

European state system, Hereen on 46 European treaty law 14, 30 Everett, Alexander Hill 166 Everett, Edward 77 expansion/evolutionary approaches 2 Fabry, Mikulas 6, 13, 140–156, 226 Falkland Islands 88 Family of Nations 169 The Federalist Papers 161–162 Federalists 43–44, 67–68, 216 federal principle 45 Ferdinand VII 57, 64 Field Code 103 Field, David Dudley 103 Fillmore, Millard 24, 131–132, 134 Finkelman, P. 108 Finland, Tampere 23 First Opium War (1839-1842) 21, 120, 124; see also Second Opium War (1856-1860) First World Anti-Slavery Convention (1840) 123 Fishing Agreement (1818) 184, 189 Florida 23–24, 63–64, 86, 111, 180, 199 Foreign Enlistment Act (1870) 151, 231 foreign ministers, qualifications of 33 foundational institutions 4; see also procedural institutions Founding Fathers 11–12, 33, 42, 146, 217, 219, 227 France 5, 20, 31, 120, 144, 200, 217–218; alliance with Spain 56–57, 65; Hamilton on 47; North American ambitions of 46–47; support for the United States 41, 217–218, 223; treaties with Britain 87 Franco–Prussian War (1870–1871) 103–104 Franklin, Benjamin 28, 162, 223 free trade 118–120, 122, 130–134, 137, 230; see also market French and Indian War (1754-1763) 111 French colonies 7, 18, 88 French Guyana 88 French privateers 19 French Republic, Jefferson on 55 French Revolutionary Wars 19, 23, 46, 48, 145; see also Napoleonic Wars Fukuzawa, Yukichi 169–170 Fung, M. 229

Gadsden, James 133 Gadsen Purchase 199 Ganghwa Treaty (1876) 170 Genêt, Edmond-Charles 48 Geneva Conventions 103 George III 39 Georgia 38, 111–112 German Empire 161–162 Germany 96 globalization 17 Goebel, Julius 147 Gong, Gerrit 163 government legitimacy 146–147 Government of India Act (1858) 17 governments 165n18 Grant, Ulysses S. 20 great powers 172, 196–197, 201, 208, 214; Britain as 143; Hague Conferences 202–206; responsibilities of 86; United States as 8, 12, 14, 31, 196–197, 200–201, 204, 212–213, 225–226, 228, 235–237 great powers management 197–198, 216, 225–226, 235–236 Greece 69–74, 79, 175, 227 Greek Revolution (1821-1829) 55, 67, 73, 150–151, 155, 227; and Russia 69, 72; scholars on 67–69; and the US economy 75–80; see also Ottoman Empire Green, Daniel M. 13, 118–137, 227, 230–231 Green, Duff 123–124 Grotius, Hugo 7, 29, 36, 161, 167, 170, 180, 218–219, 228–229 Grynoviski, E. 176 Guam 26, 95, 225 guarantee 3 Guizot, Francois 129, 200 Hague Conferences 202–207, 209, 211, 213 Haiti 23, 90, 94, 107 Hall, William Edward 168 Hallek, Henry 36 Hamilton, Alexander 30, 36, 43, 47, 49, 220 Harris, S. 192, 230 Hart, Robert 167 Hawaii 21, 26, 93, 125–126 Hay, John 205 Hayes, Rutherford B. 93 Heeren, Arnold H.L. 46

Index 245

Hendrickson, David C. 9–12, 33–51, 80, 217 Hidalgo, Miguel 64 Hinsley, F.H. 202 Hobbes, Thomas 37 Holland, T.E. 169 Holls, Frederick W. 203–204 Holsti, Kalevi 4–6, 142–143 Holy Alliance see Treaty of Holy Alliance Honduras 90, 132 Hopkins, A. G. 17–18, 225, 235 House Committee on Foreign Relations 60, 127 House of Representatives 42 Hsieh, A. 176 human rights 4 ideas, Realist views of 84 independence acknowledgements, Marshall on 62 Indian Removal Act (1830) 22, 109–113 Indian Wars 22 indigenous populations 21–22, 28, 50, 102, 111, 192–193, 225, 233–234, 236–237 The Influence of Sea Power upon History (Mahan) 25 Institut de droit international 103, 192 institutional continuity 142 institutions 3–4, 175; see also foundational institutions; primary institutions; procedural institutions; secondary institutions international arbitration 14 international civil society 202 International Court of Justice 193 internationalism 45 international law 3–4, 103–104, 161, 171–172, 216, 218–219, 221, 228–230; in the Age of Exploration 6–7; and China 125; and interference 164–165; and sovereignty 154; and states 154n2; and third parties 149; see also law of nations international social structure, and international societies 2 international society 1, 215–217, 224, 236–237; comparisons of 2; expansion of 17, 223–225, 233; history of 34; and international social structure 2; non-engagement with 8–9; and recognition 80; and state origins 143–144; and the

United States 8, 228; United States acknowledgement of 8 international theory, Founding Fathers’ use of 42 Interparliamentary Union 205 Introduction to the Study of International Law (Woolsey) 162–163, 168 Irish Question 92 IR theory 44 isolationism 9, 49–50, 80, 236 Jackson, Robert 4, 28 Jacovene, Jared 69 James, Alan 3 Janis, Mark 161 Japan 18, 21, 168–170, 222, 229, 231, 233 Jay Treaty (1794) 30, 47, 176, 178–179, 182, 188–189, 192–193, 221, 229–230 Jefferson, Thomas 10, 20, 35–36, 47, 49–50, 55, 87, 145–146, 223, 227, 232; concerns about Britain 48; and the Declaration of Independence 38, 146; and Greece 71; and slavery 106; on statehood 74 Jeffery, Renee 161 Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823) 111–113 Joseon Kingdom 170 jus sanguinis 110; see also citizenship jus soli 110; see also citizenship Kansas–Nebraska Act (1854) 134 Kant, Immanuel 145, 149 Kaplan, Lawrence 68 Kasson, John 202 Kaufman, Joyce 8–11, 80–81 Kelsen, Hans 104 Kennedy, Paul 119 Kent, James 160–161 Kentucky 70 Kerry, John 98 Key, Francis Scott 107–108 King, William 200 Klecskowsky, M. 167–168 Knudsen, Tonny Brems 141–143 Korea 170–171 Kountouriotes, Pavlos 74 La Jeune Eugenie see United States v. La Jeune Eugenie (1822) Langdell, Christopher Columbus 102–103 Latin America 236; and Britain 66

246 Index

Latin American revolutions 23, 55, 57, 64, 149–150; see also Spanish colonies Lauterpacht, Hersch 104 law of nations 36–37, 50, 89, 112–113, 161, 164, 216, 218–219; see also international law Law of Nations (Vattel) 13, 28–29, 36, 162, 167 laws of nature 36–37 lawyers, education of 102–103, 160 League of Nations 50–51, 97 Legal Formalism doctrine 12–13, 100, 114; and the Doctrine of Discovery 112–113; and immanence 101–102, 113; origins of 100–101 legal pluralism 225 legal positivism 30, 100–101, 154, 162, 167, 228 Leuchenberg, William 30 liberal pluralism 140, 155–156, 227 Liberia 107 Lieber Code 231–232 Lieber, Francis 29, 232 Lincoln administration 151, 231–232 Little, Richard 1, 14, 215–237 Locarno Pact 98 Locke, John 35–36, 145 Lodge, Henry Cabot 93, 97 Lopez, Narciso 132 Lorimer, James 229 Louisiana Purchase 19–20, 22, 28, 88, 180, 199, 226 Louriottis, Andreas 70, 72, 74 lumber disputes 191 Lynch, Thomas 39 Lyon-Seward Treaty (1862) 186 McDougall, Walter 9, 80 Machiavelli, Niccolò 36 McKinley, William 95, 197 McLane, Louis 200 Madison, James 24, 37, 43, 49, 58–59, 66, 86, 148 Mahan, Alfred Thayer 203 Maine 188–189 Maine explosion 25, 94 “Manifest Destiny” 89, 93, 111, 128 Mare Liberum (Grotius) 218–219 market 219–221, 230–231; see also free trade Marshall Court (1801–1835) 160, 163 Marshall, John 60, 62, 106, 108–109, 111–113, 163 Martin, Jacob 200

Martin, William Alexander Parsons 166–168 Maryland 70 Massachusetts 34, 38, 189 Massachusetts Declaration of Rights 38 Mavrokordatos, Alexander 70–71 Maximilian (Emperor) 91 Mayall, James 4 Mearsheimer, John 8 Meinig, D.W. 19 Metternich, Klemens von 66 Mexican-American War 129–131 Mexican nationalizations 27 Mexico 120–121, 123–124, 128, 131, 133, 200; and France 88; territorial disputes 88, 90 Mexico City 57 Middleton, Henry 69 Mill, J. S. 149 Miranda, Francisco de 59, 64 Model Treaty 28, 223 Monroe Doctrine 10, 12, 20, 24, 66–67, 69, 73, 78, 84–87, 98, 126, 129, 132, 136, 148, 154–155, 199– 200, 208, 226; and BIS 119; Clark Amendment 97–98; Olney Corollary 93–94; Polk Corollary 89–91, 131; Roosevelt Corollary 26, 96–97, 156; and Spain 91 Monroe, James 12, 24, 43, 58–61, 64–67, 85, 150; and Greece 68–71, 73–74 Monroe–Pinkney Treaty (1806) 183 Monteverde, Domingo 59 Montevideo 57 Morgenthau, Hans 98 Morris, Gouverneur 55 Morse, Jedidiah 112 Mosquito Protectorate 88, 90, 132 Muraviev, Mikhail 202 Murrin, John 34 Napoleon Code 30, 160 Napoleonic Wars 164, 175–176, 180–181, 193; see also French Revolutionary Wars National Advocate 160 National Conservation Commission 211 nationalism 34 natural law doctrines 7, 12–13, 35–36, 102, 167, 228–229 Navari, Cornelia 13–14, 17–31, 159–172, 228–229, 231 negarchy 232n1

Index 247

Netherlands 120 neutrality 3, 9–10, 47, 79–80, 149; see also Monroe Doctrine Neutrality Acts (1794, 1817, 1818) 24, 148, 151, 231 neutrality laws 148, 151 Nevada 199 New Brunswick 188–189, 191 New England 28, 50 Newfoundland 191 New Granada 130–131, 135, 199 New Imperialism 137 New Mexico 199, 234 New York 70 Nicaragua 88–89, 91, 93, 132–134, 136 Nicholas II (Czar) 202 nineteenth century diplomacy: and American presence 201–202, 209– 210; see also Hague Conferences non-discrimination 4 non-engagement 80 non-intervention 4, 145–147, 151–152, 155 non-territorialism 121, 137 North American Conservation Conference 211–212 “no transfers” principles 85–86 Of the Law of Nature and Nations (Pufendorf) 36 O’Higgins, Bernardo 61 Ohio Valley 111 Olney/Paunceforte agreement (1897) 94 Olney, Richard 20, 93–94, 156 On the Law of War and Peace (Grotius) 36, 161, 180 Onuf, Nicholas 163–164 opium trade 26, 75–77; see also First Opium War (1839-1842); Second Opium War (1856-1860) Opium wars see First Opium War (1839-1842), Second Opium War (1856-1860) Oppenheim, Lassa 104 Orea, Telesforo de 58–59 Oregon 88–89, 129–130, 190–191, 199 Oregon Treaty (1846) 185, 190 Ostend Manifesto (1854) 133–134 O'Sullivan, John L. 89, 93, 129 Otto (Prince) 78–79 Ottoman Empire 68–70, 73, 75–77, 79–80, 163, 166, 169; and Britain 120–121; see also Greek Revolution (1821-1829)

Pacific Northwest 86, 88, 125 Palmerston, Viscount 128, 134 Panama 89, 93, 95, 97, 131, 135, 199 Panama Canal 26, 89, 93, 95 Pan-American Conferences 206 Parker, Peter 135 Passy, Frédéric 103 peace movements 192 Peace of Paris (1783) 41 Peel, Robert 120–121, 123, 127–130 Perkins, Thomas H. 69, 75–78 Permanent Court of Arbitration 192, 205, 209 Permanent Court of International Arbitration 192 Perry, Matthew C. 21, 132, 134, 168 Peru 192 Philadelphia Federal Convention (1787) 41–42 Philadelphia System 222 Philippines 26, 30, 93, 95, 225 Philippine uprising (1899-1913) 27 Pierce, Franklin 133–134 Pinchot, Gifford 211–212 pluralist–solidarist spectrum 3 Pocock, J. G. A. 233 Polignac Memorandum (1823) 66, 155 Political Disquisitions (Burgh) 223 Polk, James 89–90, 128, 130, 228; see also Monroe Doctrine Portugal 56–57 Portugese colonies 7, 19, 23 positivism see legal positivism Postal Convention (1848) 185 Pratt, J. W. 88, 98 Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) 106–107 primary institutions 2–6, 141–142, 191–193, 216; see also specific institutions “Progressivism and Imperialism” (Leuchenberg) 30 The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (Austin) 100–101 Publius 42–43 Puerto Rico 26, 56, 225 Pueyrredon, Juan Martin de 61 Pufendorf, Samuel 11, 28–29, 36–37, 161, 180, 218 Quasi-War 19 Quintuple Treaty (1841) 123, 126 racial hierarchies 30 Ramsay, David 40

248 Index

recognition 80, 143–144, 146–147, 149–150, 152–153, 155, 227 recognition of belligerency 148, 151–152, 227 recognition of de facto governments 149, 153–156, 165, 227 recognition of insurgency 152 Repousis, Angelos 68 right of soil 112 Rio de Janeiro 206–208, 211 Roatan Island 88 Rodgers, John 75 Rolfe, John 27 Rolin-Jaequemyns, Gustave 103 Roosevelt, Theodore 25–26, 30, 95–96, 156, 197, 205, 207–208, 211–213 Root, Elihu 14, 206–209, 211 Rossi, Christopher R. 13, 100–114, 228–229, 234 Roth, Brad 147 Rush Bagot Treaty (1817) 92, 181, 184, 188–189 Rush, Richard 65–66, 70–71, 74 Russia 5, 135; and the Greek Revolution 69, 72; imperial conquests by 21–22, 234; peasant revolts (1905-1906) 23; and serfdom 23; and Spain 65; and the United States 21–22, 69–70; see also Treaty of Holy Alliance Russian Revolution 27 Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) 205–206 Russo–Turkish War (1829) 78 Salisbury, Lord 94 Samoa 26 Sanford, Henry 202 San Martin, Jose de 64 Santiago 57 secondary institutions 5, 142, 151–152 Second Opium War (1856-1860) 135–136; see also First Opium War (1839-1842) self-determination 4 Seminole 109 Settlement of the Claims of the Hudson Bay and Puget's Sound Agricultural Companies (1863) 187, 190 Seven Years War (1756-1763) 19, 218 Seward, William H. 91 Shaping of America (Meinig) 19 Sharp, Paul 12, 84–99, 226

Singer, J. D. 223, 235 slavery 11, 13, 23, 34, 38, 87, 106; and BIS 118–120, 135; and the British West Indies 119–120, 122; and the Continental Congress 38; and Georgia 38; and Massachusetts 34, 38; slave trade 87, 105–107, 113, 120, 123, 126, 135, 186, 190, 220–221; and South Carolina 38–39; and territory 131–132; and Texas 127–128; and the United States Constitution 42, 106–107; and Virginia 38; see also Civil War; specific colonies/countries Slave Trade Act 107–109, 113 Small, M. 223, 235 Société française pour l’arbitrage entre nations 103 South American states: American recognition of 59–60, 64–65, 85; see also Spanish colonies; specific countries; United Provinces of South America South Carolina 70; and slavery 38–39 Southard, Samuel L. 72 Southern United States, and Britain 50 sovereignty 3–4, 141–142, 216–218, 221, 226–227, 237; and de facto governments 149, 154, 227; nineteenth century 140, 234 Spain 144; alliance with France 56–57, 65; American concerns with 85–86; and Britain 64, 120; and the Dominican Republic 91; Iberian Peninsula 67; in North America 47; and Russia 65; and the slave trade 133 Spandler, Kilian 152, 191–192 Spanish-American War (1898) 25–26, 55–56, 95, 201 Spanish colonies 7, 18–20, 56–57, 85, 105, 152–155, 225; independence wars 23, 56, 58–60, 62, 64, 79, 148–151; see also Latin American revolutions; South American states; specific countries; United Provinces of South America spheres of influence 86 “Standard of Civilization” 137 Standard of ‘Civilization’ (Gong) 163 Star-Spangled Banner 107–108 state, Bull on 3 states 154n2, 216; creation of 234; representation of 106

Index 249

states rights 163–164 state systems 45–46, 154; and authority 141; European origins of 143–144; internal affairs of 155n4; and recognition 152–153; rights of 163 Stelder, M. 229 Stivachtis, Yannis 1–14, 54–81, 216 Story, Joseph 106–108, 161 Suez Canal 93 Sumner, Charles 179 Suppression of the African Slave Trade (1862) 186, 190 Sweden 144 Taft, William Howard 197, 213 Taney, Roger B. 106 Tangiers, United States resident legation in 10, 54 Tariff Act (1789) 220 Taylor, Zachary 128, 131–132 Temperley, H. 123–124 terra nullius doctrine 105, 136; see also Doctrine of Discovery territorial expansion 21–22, 25, 88, 190, 199, 222, 233 territorial integrity 4 Texas 88–89, 123, 126–129, 155, 199–200 Thorndike, Israel 69, 77–78 Tilley, Charles 25 Tocqueville, Alexis de 22 Tracy, Benjamin F. 25 trade 3, 219–221 Treatise on International Law (Hall) 168 Treaty NE boundary/Passamaquody Bay Islands (1802) 182 Treaty of Amity (1758) 223 Treaty of Amity (1858) 170 Treaty of Amity (1871) 187, 190–191 Treaty of Balta Liman (1838) 120 Treaty of Ghent (1814) 177, 181, 183, 189 Treaty of Holy Alliance 57–58, 63, 65– 66, 72, 74, 148–149, 153, 226–227 Treaty of Nanking 125–126 Treaty of Paris (1763) 28, 111, 176–177 Treaty of Paris (1783) 178–179, 182, 193, 216, 219, 221, 227 Treaty of Paris (1856) 166 Treaty of Portsmouth (1905) 205–206 Treaty of San Lorenzo (1795) 177 Treaty of Tientsin (1858) 168

Treaty of Tordesillas (1493) 6, 87 Treaty of Washington (1871) 92–93, 231 Treaty of Westphalia (1648) 176 Treaty of Whitehall (1686) 87 Trump, Donald 98 Turkey 29, 233 Tyler Doctrine 126 Tyler, John 124, 126–127 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea 193 unilateralism 9–11, 50, 80 United Provinces of la Plata 61, 63 United Provinces of South America 60–61 United States 5, 144–145, 200; as empire 233; federal government growth 24; geographical position of 43; as great power 8, 12, 14, 31, 196–197, 200–201, 204, 212–213, 225–226, 228, 235–237; and international society 8; Navy 25–26, 125–126, 189, 222; and neutrality 9–10, 12, 19, 40, 47, 54, 59–60, 149–150; Open Doors policy 21; and the Romans 25; and Russia 21–22, 69–70; State Department 223; treaties with natives 21–22, 28, 50, 102, 111, 192–193; see also America United States Constitution 11, 13, 24–25, 44, 46, 178–179, 198, 217, 219, 221, 226, 233–234; and Anti-Federalists 43–44; and representation 106; and slavery 42, 106–107; Thirteenth Amendment 107; and treaties 180–181 United States economy; and foreign trade 10, 54; and the Greek Revolution 75–80; and the Ottoman Empire 69, 75–80 United States foreign policy 63 United States v. Hutchings 60 United States v. La Jeune Eugenie (1822) 108–109 United States v. Palmer 62 universal law 7 universalism 137 University of Poitiers 160 UN Security Council 5 Upshur, Abel 124–125, 127 USS Maine see Maine explosion U.S. v. Schooner Amistad (1841) 108 uti possidetis 105

250 Index

Van Buren, Martin 180 Vatell, Emer de 11, 13, 28, 36–37, 112, 162, 218–219, 228 Venezuela 58–59, 93–94, 96–97 Versailles Treaty 31 Virginia 38, 124 Virginia Convention (1829-1830) 43 von Tuyll, Baron 65 Wake Island 26 Walker, Quock 38 Walker, Robert 130 Walker Tariff 130 Walker, William 134 war 3–4, 13–14, 170, 216–217, 221–222, 231–232; laws of war 29, 36, 231–232; naval warfare 203; and third parties 149–150 War of 1812 19–20, 54, 79, 107, 160, 164, 178, 189, 217, 221, 230; and Federalists 67–68 Ward, John E. 167 Wars of Religion 176 Washington, George 10, 30, 87, 148, 180, 219, 232; 1796 Farewell Address 40, 49, 54–55; and neutrality 47 Watson, Adam 2

Webster–Ashburton Treaty (1842) 126, 177, 180, 185, 188–189 Webster, Charles 73–74 Webster, Daniel 77, 127 Western Cherokee 110–111; see also Cherokee Westlake, John 103 Wheaton, Henry 29–30, 159–160, 162, 164–165, 229; see also Elements of International Law (Wheaton) White, Andrew 203–204 Wight, Martin 2–3, 140, 200–201 William I (Netherlands) 177 Wilson, James 44 Wilson, Woodrow 18, 31, 34, 50–51, 197 Wirt, William 62 Wise, Henry 124 Woolsey, Theodore 162–163 Worcester v. Georgia (1832) 112–113 World Conservation Congress 211, 213 World War I 27, 30–31 World War II 98, 231 Wright, Quincy 155 Yin, Z. 167 Yucatan 131